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Comment by lesuorac | Hacker News Reader

Do people think USD being accepted at kink stores gives the USA a reputation risk?

I just don't see the argument that a payment processor being able to process payments legitimately gives them reputation risk. I don't doubt that people write in to MasterCard to claim it does but people write about everything.

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While I don't think MC's or Visa's reputation is at all close to being fragile enough to be harmed by use on any Steam game, the idea that these companies are almost like public utilities that shouldn't have a say in their deals is their reputation.

And carrying large amounts of USD cash does have a negative reputation, even to the US government. Nevermind the reputation of cryptocurrency.

I believe the issue is Visa PayPal, and Mastercard are capitualating to interest groups bombarding them with complaints and then celebrating censorship on social media posts. I agree with your sentiment, it's ridiculous.

If there were a law that MC had to be an impartial utility, like a phone or electricity provider, then it wouldn't hurt their reputation. But since there is no such law, they have the choice to deny transactions, which also means they can be blamed (by puritans) for allowing them.

I'm not sure you need MC to be an impartial utility.

IIUC, the problem here is the colluding behavior. Steam can't just "drop" MC and use Visa for the transactions as the banks must abide by MC's rules even when MC isn't the payment processor just to be eligible to be a bank for MC.

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