No, these companies keep themselves in power not because they've solved such a difficult problem that nobody else can, but because they have a moat which they protect.
Time to do away with these foreign entities.
- For many consumers there isn't sufficient money in the account to settle all the one-time and ongoing transactions they are liable for -- credit cards are giving you a revolving loan, there's risk it will not be repaid, and that risk ends up reflected in processing fees
- For many _businesses_ managing cash flow is existential -- as merchants they want to be paid as quickly as possible, but as B2B customers they want to have 30-60 days to sell the input goods they've purchased so they can pay for them upstream. There is a premium for that flexibility that gets reflected in processing fees.
- For both consumers and merchants, fraud risk is real and while it's the most solvable part of all this it's a real (and costly!) factor today. That risk for fraud gets moved upstream to the networks/acquirers/processors/issuers and that premium shows up in (you guessed it) processing fees.
If you want to switch the world to a debit-based system where economic transactions are limited by cash on hand, I'd argue that's a poorer and less dynamic world than the one we're operating in today.
And if you are a $MegaBigCorp customer of them, you can customize even more.
these debit like credit cards put a different light on the statistics. as some people here have said, europeans don't use creditcards, and then someone contradicted that with a statistic of how much is paid with credit cards. how much of those credit card payments are made with debit like cards like mine?
europe doesn't want their people to get into credit debt. possibly protection for people is stronger and makes it harder for banks to recover if people fail to pay? but most likely countries just want people to be able to protect themselves from overspending.
like i can get an overdraw limit on my bank account. it is set to a default value based on my income. but i deliberately reset that to zero. i don't want an overdraw limit. if i really need to overdraw i'll change the limit at that time and i think i can even set that it is valid only for a short time and then it resets automatically.
IIRC, bunq in the Netherlands issues Mastercard "credit cards" (with no "debit" annotation as on true Mastercard debit cards). They're treated as credit cards for Mastercard purposes but are backed by deposits.
as i said, it is possible that i can actually get a real credit limit on the card, or possibly the bank has other credit card products.
Things have been changing a bit in recent years. Since the "debit" and "credit" nature of the card is now written on them, French folks have started to request "credit" ones for travelling (to rent a car for instance).
My understanding is that for car rental purposes, anything using Visa/MC (and not a national debit network like Visa Debit in the US) will work, it doesn't actually need to be backed by a revolving credit. At a US gas pump, a Frenchie needs to select "credit" even though the card has "debit" written on it. Still, should the clerk refuse the card because it reads "debit" without running it... better have this "credit"-labeled one.
Many companies will refuse all debit cards, or all cards with "electronic use only" restriction, at least for the deposit, irrespective of the payment network involved.
American Express is big in this market - what looks like a normal Amex Business Platinum card can very well be a charge card that needs to be paid in full at the due date every month.
There are minor differences but the big one is no carried balance between months is allowed. Payment in full due each month.
Their self-harming has been impressive.
In fact just today I read this article in my EU country that sounds almost identical to what this comment describes:
“ If, for example, the payment was made by credit card and the product has not been delivered, the consumer can contact their credit card company directly and request a refund.
Credit card firms can usually refund the money quickly, Beurling-Pomoell noted, whereas consumers who paid by debit card must try to claim their money back from the bankruptcy estate.
"Unfortunately, [reclaiming money from a bankruptcy estate] is usually a very long and difficult process. Consumers are generally in a relatively weak position when a company goes bankrupt," he said.
Beurling-Pomoell added that consumers should always consider using a credit card when purchasing a product that they do not immediately receive.”
https://www.ft.com/content/837a7b40-f534-11e3-91a8-00144feab...
users can even avoid interest if they pay that card off every month
I pay everything with my credit card (bills, stores, online, etc) and pay it off at the end of the month. Even my tap-to-pay is tied to the credit card. I never use my debit card anywhere but an ATM. I have never had my bank account violated but I have had the credit card stolen from a store I visited (card company caught it as there was a bunch of fraud from the same store, they let me know and they proactively replaced my credit card)
I have never had my ATM card compromised as it is for one purpose, the ATM
best part of all is my credit score loves the large payments I always make on my credit card
Yes that's what I'm talking about too, and it's called misuse. Liability is capped at 50€ as I said. We also don't have any fixed overdraft fees, only a compared to credit cards low interest rate, but this would also be the banks problem in this case. Also you still need a pin to pay or 2FA when paying online for European Cards. So that scenario seems very unlikely anyway.
> I have never had my ATM card compromised as it is for one purpose, the ATM but I have had the credit card stolen from a store I visited (card company caught it as there was a bunch of fraud from the same store, they let me know and they proactively replaced my credit card.
I have never had my card compromised, as it only uses the EMV Chip for payments in the civilized world, which you can't clone, and even then you would still need the PIN to pay, or the second Factor. I also never had my Debit card (what you mean with ATM card) compromised, because it's the same thing.
When a card is stolen or cloned, it is usually discovered really fast. Either by the victim or by the bank. It's probably in most cases a matter of hours or even minutes.
If your CC is stolen, you are not out all the cash in your account until the dispute is resolved.
If your debit card is stolen, you lose that cash, making it more difficult to pay whatever other obligations you have that period.
But the more concerning fraud is when you purchase something and don't receive what you should have received from the merchant. Whether it is due to outright fraud or not. In these cases you will also have your money reimbursed by your credit or debit card.
This may be what the letter of the law says but this isn't reality. Using debit puts you at greater financial risk.
What how? Surely the US populations credit card debt dorf even the global populations debit card fraud numbers. So while my whole family in a combined 200 years of adulthood have indeed lost some 1000 euro total in fraud, it's not thing compared to the average Americans credit card bills.
I'd rather risk the street criminals with my debit than the suit wearing ones with their credit.
With a credit card, if the card is compromised, its not my money being stolen - its the card issuer's money from my line of credit, and they were planning on settling up with me when my monthly statement closes. I still have to launch a fraud case with the issuer, but critically, _all of my money is still in my bank account_ and I can continue to pay my other bills and obligations as normal.
I think its reasonable to consider giving up that buffer to be additional risk for the debit card approach, setting aside any other advantages or disadvantages between the two.
Your bank lacks proper security protections then. Here most banks have limits on debit card transactions. If you want to do a very large transaction, you have to increase the limit for a short time period in your banking app, and there is a delay of a few hours (they'll warn you when the spending limit is increased).
IANAL, but also consumer protection is much stronger in Europe. E.g. in NL if you stick to 5 basic rules, which are sensible things like not intentionally giving away your banking card or PIN code, the bank has to refund stolen money:
https://www.consumentenbond.nl/betaalrekening/bankvoorwaarde...
Just a quick Google... Wells Fargo's policy is 10 days to either case resolution OR provisional credit. I assume that's typical for American banks. For somebody living paycheck to paycheck, 10 days is a long time to go without access to what little cash they might have.
Not to mention the per-purchase (online/in-person) limits, mandatory PIN entry, and daily maximums...
I've never had a web shop use an API to deduct from my bank account - the closest thing is PayPal, which as far as I can tell is basically ACH under the covers, just though an intermediary. Pretty sure more Americans use their CC or debit card for online shopping.
But even if it were - most people operate one checking account, and most folks don't keep an especially large balance. If your debit card gets compromised or there is an erroneous charge, it will process up to your balance. It is incumbent on you to notice the fraud and take action. If the bad dip is today, and tomorrow morning my mortgage and other payments bounce or hit overdraft, I have a mess to clean up.
With a credit card, you're typically hitting a larger credit line that isn't fully utilize -- you may not notice the bad charge for a month, but there's no impact to you... the thief stole the bank's money.
Also how would someone misuse it? You need a PIN Code for every transaction anyway, and the EMV Chip can't be cloned like Magstripes.
Online Payments need a mandatory 2 Factor Authentication
The text on that link of yours is sneaky though:
"...you MAY be asked to..." (Emphasis mine)
https://svenskforfattningssamling.se/sites/default/files/sfs...
Edit: Page 28 to be precise.
The law explicitly states that funds have to be reimbursed to the victim immediately or at latest on the same bank day.
https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/sven...
The law 2018:175, which I previously linked to, is crystal clear and protects consumers against unauthorized use of their digital payment means, including but not limited to all types of card transactions. Otherwise, please let me know which chapter excludes debit cards.
Even bank transactions are protected by this law. And it has been all the way to the supreme court, which ruled in favour of the fraud victim against the bank. The victim had voluntarily handed over their digital banking credentials to scammers, and the bank refused to reimburse the stolen money. However, the supreme court ruled that the bank was indeed bound by law to reimburse the money:
https://www.domstol.se/hogsta-domstolen/avgoranden2/2022/115...
But even so, if the law is not enough and if the supreme court ruling is not enough for you, then at least empirical evidence should be enough? Just ask around with family and friends and you'll find at least a few people who have been the victims of having their debit card stolen or cloned. They will let you know that the bank returned their money swiftly.
It’s sort of true in a legal sense, but not a practical one. If you find yourself in a dispute (even outright fraud sometimes) you might end up stuck for weeks or months with your disputed funds frozen.
If you are a highly paid software engineer with considerable assets and transaction volume at your bank it’s likely you will never experience hardship with disputing a transaction. If you are someone scraping by and that $200 depends on you paying rent on time that month you will find your experience to perhaps be different.
I’ve helped friends and family with such disputes in the past. Credit cards even when it “goes wrong” are much better to deal with. Your credit limit being reduced a bit is immaterial to your life most of the time. Having your own money tied up during an investigation that demands more and more paperwork like police reports etc. can be incredibly damaging and if nothing else quite stressful. The experience some of my friends had in these matters is nothing like I had when I had my wallet stolen and I no longer recommend anyone use debit if they can avoid it.
Heck, I had a friend who doesn’t even have a passport dispute an ATM transaction in a country he never visited. The bank initially denied it and it took weeks to eventually get it resolved in his favor.
In the end having the banks money tied up vs your own money at risk is always better if you can handle the responsibility of a credit card.
Was that an introduction to the rest of your comment?
Explain to me please how a dispute with a vendor on a purchase makes a difference for your ability to pay rent? If the purchase was not fraud, then you have used that money anyway with your purchase. Unless you're planning to pay rent by bartering your Amazon order.
If you're instead talking about a stolen or cloned debit card, then that money is refunded usually as soon as you've made a police report and sent it to the bank, which is a matter of two days at most. The paperwork is not difficult, because cards get stolen and cloned all the time.
But the fraud protection is the same, even if procedures and timelines might differ.
I wrote about outright fraud taking weeks (in one case, months) to resolve. From my own personal direct experience.
> I had a friend who doesn’t even have a passport dispute an ATM transaction in a country he never visited.
Does this sound like a dispute with a vendor or outright fraud?
A dispute with a vendor can also mean an overcharge or something like a renewal fee for a yearly membership that is under dispute. It's not just marginal items you bought and the vendor refuses a return or it never shows up or whatever.
Like I said - if you are a highly paid professional you likely will never have a problem with this. It's an invisible part of the economy to you. If you are working class you are much more likely to have a wildly different experience. Banks have what is effectively an internal credit score system for each customer. For those with serious assets with the bank you get a lot more leeway and benefit of the doubt until you start abusing it.
I've had my own bank account emptied by card cloners. And the bank reimbursed the money swiftly after having made a police report. The same for everybody else I know who have fallen victim to the same. None of us with any kind of impressive assets when it happened.
As for disputes with vendors, sure, I give you that there is a difference in time frame when paying by credit instead of debit.
A cloned or stolen card should never take weeks or months to resolve. In that case, you've been the victim of a criminal bank. It's not the experience for most victims, whether rich or poor.
It is not risk taking, it is a system that not just normalized the debt, but punishes people for not taking it. When you are recommended to use credit card, so you can function on debt, so that you can get better mortgage later on, then the thing in play is not just "risk aversion".
My European business banks have never offered any kind of line of credit. Of course they probably would if I needed, and went there to grovel and prostrate myself. In contrast, my American business bank just sends unprompted e-mails sometimes asking if I would like to borrow a bunch of money.
American trust is based on rationality and intuition, while European trust is based on rules and authority. That's why business can flourish much more in the USA.
And look where that's gotten you.
> American trust is based on rationality and intuition
Just remind us where the 2008 subprime crisis started again?
It makes much more sense too.
The financial system is built to stimulate that. For example if you'd buy a house you need to pay about 30% in cash and you can't loan that money somewhere else. This way you get people that know how to deal with money. And also the bank doesn't run a big risk if there's a market slump.
The minimum 10% deposit is mainly there to cover taxes, which cannot really be recovered by the bank in the event of default.
And the fixed-rate mortgages are a good thing (though only when the rate is low hehe)
They fought tooth and nail against cash discounts OR credit surcharges and they finally lost. In some areas it's rampant that you get a pretty substantial discount - often 4 or 5%, better than cash-back - and many places post "cash prices".
You can get even more if you're willing to ride the hassle of the gift card train.
The credit card companies know people spend more if they use credit cards, and they turn around and sell that to the merchants.
Credit card companies are allowed to run cashback for using them.
All in the name of "consumer rights": https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/payment-surcharge...
Colorado law recently changed permitting merchants to pass on the actual cost of processing, except for cash, check and debit payments.
https://colorado.public.law/statutes/crs_5-2-212
This law overrides any prior contractual agreements with banks/processing companies that prohibit surcharges. This is previously how MasterCard and VISA coerced merchants into absorbing the processing fee, by contractually requiring credit same as cash pricing.
If I take a random loan with the bank and use those funds to do the same purchases using debit, then I'm the one taking the loss.
This is a uniquely American viewpoint. In most of Europe you don't buy anything on credit ever.
By December 2025, consumer credit in the Euro area alone stood at an estimated €812 billion.
Sure, in Europe people will subscribe to a credit to buy a car or materials to improve their home.
But buying your groceries or lunch with a credit card is quite a rare exception.
It also varies greatly by country, but all major European countries still have significant credit card (not consumer, so excluding e.g. car loans) debt, with the most "credit willing" countries like the UK reaching around 1/3 the US average credit card balance (but you'd also want to adjust for average salaries before comparing these). There is no single attitude to this across Europe.
You could draw all of it and put in a a 2x leveraged SP500 ETF :-D for 3 month and then return the money :-D
Imagine if all the shares in Bank X were paid for by loans issued by Bank X.
1) physical card, which works like a credit card. 2) You can flex payments you made on your regular card.
The rules are the same. If it was a card purchase it will more than likely flex (it will if you used the Flex card, account it will depend on the type of transaction.) But it needs to be used for purchases. I guess you could set up a CC processing unit and pay yourself, but it somehow doesn't seem worth it. You can't flex a bank transfer for example.
When you Flex, it gives you the option to "pay on next payment cycle", "pay in 3 installments with 0 interest", "pay in 6/12 installments with the usual big interest". But you can at any point pay it off and so you could do it over 4 months and only pay minimal interest and you could pay over the amount due and make it pay off quicker.
Airbnb reservations I also tend to do on credit.
Anything related to company expenses I also do on credit and receive reimbursement prior to having to pay it myself.
The only time I even considered it was to build a credit score in the UK to eventually apply for a mortgage, but even then it's not really necessary.
Not having a credit score isn't necessarily a big problem, as banks use it for context rather than making decisions purely based on it, but I did see some advice online about getting a "credit builder card" [1] (essentially a high interest and low credit limit card) as a way to build up credit history.
I decided that getting in debt just so I can prove I can get out of it is a stupid system, and didn't do it. Last time I checked (with Experian), I had a perfect credit score, so I don't know what happened in the meantime.
1: https://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/credit-cards/types/credi...
From your nickname it sounds like you are from Romania so if that's so there might be a dose of xenofobia included there as well. That is kinda big in the UK right now, the whole Brexit was fuelled by it, sadly, especially concerning eastern Europe. I was on the receiving end of some of it myself too, being called 'a non-national' and eyed with distrust. I'm sorry.
There are also official debt registries, where you (and prospective lenders) can look up how much debt you have.
A bit different than the credit score concept.
In Moldova where I'm from, only 8% of adults have one.
Besides, if you want insurance just get a 30€ per year rolling package.
My credit card has a yearly fee of €36 (and it’s not like having a debit card instead would have been free). The total annual insurance premiums of all insurances that it includes (travel, third party liability, purchase) would exceed €200 from the same provider.
The widespread use with "buy now pay later" also counters your wildly baseless claim. Klarna, PayPal 30 days etc.
I lost 3 credit cards INSIDE an airplane (hello AirAsia!). I only realized it when I turned on my phone while queuing at immigration and was bombarded with dozens of "Successful transaction" messages. That's ~30min from stepping off the airplane. When I checked my statements, I saw dozens of physical transactions (swipes/taps) with different merchants in different cities from the airport.
All 3 cards have different PINs. All require a PIN for transactions above ~USD200. Yet the banks rejected my disputes because "it's a physical transaction, so you must be the one doing it." Apparently, they all think I could fly to different cities, buy different items, and fly back to wait in immigration, all in 30 minutes.
https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/nfc-gate-relay-attacks-2026/5...
Neither Visa nor MasterCard are loaning customers their money. It's the European banks that hold the bulk of the risk for European credit card transactions.
Chip and pin and NFC transitions took off much quicker outside the US because merchants generally owned more of the chargeback risk than in the US, and therefore were willing to update their POS equipment accordingly.
Risk (like debt) is another place where a US-centric view will likely lead you to misunderstand the purpose of Visa/MC.
Not really. The risk of all fraud is initial borne by banks issuing the cards, after all they’re only parties that have an actual financial relationship with the person providing the cash/debt. If something which results in that person cash/debt being stolen, it’s between that person and their bank to figure out who’s liable for the lost money. Chargebacks are just a mechanism for banks to recover some of that lost money, once the liability between the card holder and the bank has been settled.
One of the big reasons why Chip and PIN etc took off outside of the US, is that the US is very accepting of fraud, and charging crazy high interchange rates (up to 10x what they are in Europe) so the cost of fraud is spread over many individuals. Other parts of the world have regulations capping interchange rates, and providing better consumer protection, demanding that banks and payment networks tackle fraud, rather than increase the cost of everything by 1-2% to cover fraud losses.
I have no idea what policy made the US hold into signatures for that long. But the seller and the buyer are the least powerful people on that entire chain, so I don't think it reasonable to look at them.
And the bulk of the fees from credit card transactions goes to the bank(s) since they hold the risk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee#:~:text=The%20...
This is really much less of a thing in Europe, or at the very least in Germany and Spain. Mostly it's the overdraft from banks that you can use as what you call a revolving loan. Most of the visa and mastercards I've had in my life simply debit from my main account.
I'm confused - is it not the issuing bank that gives you the loan, and the credit card company just provides the infrastructure?
Btw. having an overdraft limit of a few hundred Euros is quite typical for those liquidity issues. You don't need a credit card for that.
1. Merchant (bears little fraud risk but a lot of chargeback risk)
2. Payment Gateway (little direct risk but some liability risk)
3. Merchant Acquirer (more direct risk but mostly if merchants become insolvent)
4. Card Network (Visa/MC/AmEx - less risk but significant underlying costs managing a global technology that spans the financial system and needs to be distributed to almost every merchant of any scale in America)
5. Issuers (Banks + AmEx - most risk but get a big share of interchange fees)
I've surely missed something here that the very smart (and increasingly grumpy these days!) HN community will doubtlessly pile-on to correct, so I apologize in advance for errors or omissions... and I bow down if @patio11 swoops in to tell me about the complexity I've missed in either payments or Japanese economic/cultural conventions
Will also add that the benefit of credit is not overdraft but smoothing cash flow... if I'm living paycheck to paycheck and get paid every two weeks, I will incur essential expenses at the beginning of the fortnight that I can afford but lack cash in my account to pay now. I can't overdraft because I won't have the funds to deposit into that account for another two weeks. I'm getting a service that smooths my cashflow and there's a small premium added to reflect that. (Could you save up enough to avoid needing this? Is that a uniquely American way of living? I don't know! I'm making a descriptive claim not a normative one!)
This is so true, the EU countries are super diverse, and yet EU citizens tend to believe that whatever happens in their country is common across the Union.
I think there's plenty of money to back all the activity.
Especially if there are central banks willing to back them
Visa/MC make about 0.1-0.13% of each transaction, not a 1-2%. The rest of the interchange (the vast majority) goes to the issuing bank.
Patio11 doesn't name names or give precise figures, but: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/how-credit-cards-make...
Err, no - for _all_ businesses managing cash flow is the _only_ NR 1 crucial thing, because if they dont, they will disappear by tomorrow :)
Their risk is covered multiple ways (as reflected in their profits). You pay an annual fee to have a card. You pay per transaction, you pay for paywave, you pay 21% in interest.
They cover their risk by hitting every possible angle.
Some of the services include: - Consumer Credit - Fraud protection - Payment network - Discount service (rewards, etc) - Concierge services - Rental/Ticketing services - etc
No one is denying the utility of what they have created. The problem is they’ve built monopolistic walled gardens where these are all bundled together which raises overall costs while also prevents competition.
These services can easily be unbundled (for example in India the payment network is open and cost free, so anyone can provide those other services on top of the payment network).
What has made this far more urgent, however, is that these companies are located in the U.S. which has recently leveraged the power these networks have to attack EU citizens for frivolous reasons.
So even if the MC/Visa business model was perfect, it would be foolish for even American allies to rely on them given the actions of the current administration.
Disagree. Credit has its uses, but debit is superior for the vast majority consumer transactions: lower fees, lower risk, instant settlement, easy P2P transfers, and broader accessibility. That we've become used to credit card payment system in the West is largely a historical aberration that needs correcting.
Also, I'm a bit biased since I live in China, but WeChat Pay and Alipay are so far superior to the credit card system that I can hardly find a single redeeming quality in the latter. China was lucky in that it leapfrogged the traditional credit card system since it didn't have that historical baggage.
I don't want some asshole to be able to instantly drain my bank account. If I did, I'd be carrying a suitcase of cash around with me.
That's ridiculous. Why should I, as a consumer, care about the merchant's "risk?"
In the EU, debit cards are pretty common, and largely its a network effect. You need to get terminals that are supported by your payment provider.
A lot of merchant terminals are provided by banks, and frankly they are itching to get a sweet sweet cut of each transaction. Not only the information, but the cut of each transaction. Something like 0.2-1.5% of each transaction. (I'm sure mastercard and visa give them a cut)
For Credit cards, the banks/operator already handle most of the risk, and then pay visa a percentage for the privilege of charging usury like rates
Also bank transfers are easy, instant and free.
> For many _businesses_ managing cash flow is existential -- as merchants they want to be paid as quickly as possible, but as B2B customers they want to have 30-60 days to sell the input goods they've purchased so they can pay for them upstream. There is a premium for that flexibility that gets reflected in processing fees.
Yes those businesses use a bank loan for this, no need for a credit card again.
> If you want to switch the world to a debit-based system where economic transactions are limited by cash on hand, I'd argue that's a poorer and less dynamic world than the one we're operating in today.
Thinking that the world doesn't have credit just because they use debit cards is one of the most idiotic things I've read today
Payment networks don’t provide credit or any kind of liquidity whatsoever, that entirely provided by the various financial entities that communicate via the payment network. The reason Visa and Mastercard haven’t been easily replaced is simple network effects, nobody wants to integrate with a payment network where there’s nobody to transact with.
There’s nothing special about Mastercard and Visa rails that prevents you recreating all the functionality that the broader ecosystem provides, without Visa and Mastercard. Hell all of that functionality could be provided by exactly the same companies and banks that provide it for Visa and Mastercard networks.
That’s not how chargebacks and refunds work. Mastercard and Visa are not involved in the vast majority of disputes at all, it’s entirely handled by the card issuer and card acquirer. Mastercard/Visa only get involved in cases where network party has broken one of the technical rules of the network. For cases of missing or faulty goods etc, Mastercard/Visa do nothing except transport the messages used by bank/merchant to litigate the dispute.
When Mastercard/Visa are forced to step in and make an arbitration decision, they charge a hefty fee (hundreds of dollars) to the losing side to do so. So they have no issue with people raising disputes, it makes them a lot of money.
> Amex can see what I purchase but knows very little about me otherwise. I like this separation, and I like that it's hard for the government to get a complete picture of my financial affairs.
This is naive, all banks and credit card issuers are required by law to perform KYC (Know Your Customer) to ensure they know exactly who they’re transacting with. It’s trivial for the state to buildup a complete image of your financial situation by sending a small number of court orders to banks and financial entities to turn over all their records on you. That’s ignoring the automated tax reporting that banks also have to do.
Not saying that's the case, just given circumstances not sure if risk is needed to explain the result in this case.
> Full coverage for deposits for payment and settlement purposes, bearing no interest, being redeemable on demand, and providing normally required payment and settlement services
This is not meant as a personal attack, or meant to be defamatory. I am detecting a familiar pattern, that is entrenched culturally.
Further, I identify this cultural trait as one of the obstacles or reason for many European problems.
It’s an opinion I have.
I have credit cards for decades with various institutions, but NEVER EVER went to minus, see no reason to change it. Just a bit of discipline. We don't have public credit score or similar dictatorial stuff here. The only loan I will ever have on my name is called mortgage on real estate, and beyond that is a line I'll never cross. Same goes for everybody I know - family, friends, coworkers.
This comes from somebody working for a bank so not some clueless fool.
National banking players did not want to give up their turf. The European Union had to twist their arms to get them to agree to SEPA transfers, instant transfers, etc.
If banking players cannot agree, then regulation (or the threat of regulation) must be used.
Without laws there would be no bank in the first place, neither at national or paneuropean level.
I once worked at a company doing payment card personalization (its the company who turn blank smart cards into finalized cards on behalf of banks. They print the customers names, emboss the account number, and program the chip and the magstrip)
Every year they had comprehensive security audits from Visa, Mastercard and Groupe Carte Bleue.
One guy there told me that they did the Groupe Carte Bleue audit first, because its the toughest. If they passed it they were sure to pass the others.
Trump sure has moved the needle on that! We used to pay protection money to the US via this. Now we don't get the protection, so we don't need to pay.
VISA and Mastercard never resolved major technical problems. It's nothing a bank wouldn't already be able to achieve internally from a technological complexity point of view. They didn't invent any of the technologies, they just navigated the political and regulatory hurdles, then leveraged their position for more.
Your comment makes it look like the problems are "just" political or regulatory. These are more often then not the bigger ones.
Technology and some systems could be shared.
There are also business and regulatory problems with regard to international transactions.
Most Dutch people were unaware of the issue (because Dutch cards worked abroad), and those who were, were fully convinced that it's because Dutch system is objectively better (it wasn't, it was just a separate network). Then in like 2024/2025 Visa and Mastercard finally retired their special V-Pay and Maestro brands, and now most terminals in the Netherlands accept most normal cards.
And who wrote those? Aren't they just another part of the moat?
> It's actually quite fascinating how it was started.
Visa was founded in 1958 by Bank of America (BofA) as the BankAmericard credit card program.[1] In response to competitor Master Charge (now Mastercard), BofA began to license the BankAmericard program to other financial institutions in 1966.[8] By 1970, BofA gave up direct control of the BankAmericard program, forming a cooperative with the other various BankAmericard issuer banks to take over its management. It was then renamed Visa in 1976.
The answer is: "Banks."
It’s a captive market, which means Visa & MC really don’t have a ton of incentive to compete. How do you get new payment networks to integrate? Banks typically only offer a single network on their cards, and businesses use whatever their PoS systems accept. For a new network to compete, it’d need to be available everywhere.
It’s the textbook definition of core infrastructure for society and frankly should be operated like a utility. It’s not like Visa & MC are innovating - just look at the lethargic rollout of contactless in the US until COVID forced everyone’s hands.
The sole purpose of visa & MC is to grow profit each year. That’s it. I’m not a fan of that being in the middle of practically all consumer spending
I don't know that the problem is sophisticated, but it's certainly complex [1]. It's a bit of both in terms of complexity and defending a moat, which all businesses do, including, and especially European ones.
And companies like Visa, Mastercard, American Express, &c. arose initially from solving a real need. Before these companies came into existence when you traveled you'd have to take cash, or traveler's checks or some other nonsense. Today you can, at least as an American, just walk in to the subway in just about any country and tap to pay. Need a coffee at Mt. Fuji? Easy. Buying a bottle of Calvados in some remote area? Yea just tap to pay with your Mastercard.
> Time to do away with these foreign entities.
You'll never do that. Why? Because at a minimum you want American tourist dollars and Europe isn't going to start issuing European credit cards to Americans or other citizens around the world.
[1] Why is it complex? Well you have to deal with American and European financial regulations, KYC, &c. - you have to vet merchants, you have to run the infrastructure to process transactions, refunds, direct payments from bank accounts to pay for cards, and all of those things. Those are real, genuine business activities that are non-negotiable and while they may seem simple, in practice they are not at all simple.
And people do underestimate the complexity of it
Had to use debit.
Even more surprisingly to me - a pretty decent chunk of businesses even would accept AmEx. By no means all, but I recall it being basically nonexistent not that long ago.
And to be clear - much of my time was not in areas that get a ton of foreign tourist visitors.
Not saying your experience didn't happen, but given our very different experiences it might be something with your particular bank/issuer/card?
I was slow to try it and it’s great.
There's still an ongoing trick that some European businesses do where they'll try and get you to pay in dollars because they can arbitrarily set the exchange rate. It's obviously within "reason" but on the higher end for no purpose other than to make extra money. I find such behavior to be dishonest and deplorable.
Its an American company.
Thankfully though a lot of times these ATMs and such are avoided by American tourists because....we just use a credit card.
By the way, those fees are split with other folks. For example you might find that American Euronext ATM in a shopping plaza or outside of a storefront. Those European businesses are getting a cut of that exchange rate.
Doesn't really help if they only take cash, which is still common in Germany for example, but gotten a lot better in the last decade.
Ok so the scam is shared, great.
I didn't suggest otherwise?
> Ok so the scam is shared, great.
Yea, just making sure we're all aware that Europeans are positively complicit in this scam.
Implying we could or would not.
I wasn't implying that Europeans can't use credit cards. We were talking about tourists using credit cards versus cash.
I’d be interested to compare their rates to Wise. The credit cards here in New Zealand don’t come close. However we regularly get screwed down here, and sadly it’s not just foreign companies that do it.
Well for US-based "no foreign transaction fees" credit cards the rate is 0. There's no additional fee. For cards with foreign transaction fees you'll see something like 1% that goes to Visa/Mastercard/whoever and then the bank will charge a fee too, typically a percent or two.
But that's one thing, and then you have the actual currency conversion rates. I found an excerpt from an article that I think explains it well enough [1].
"Typically, a purchase at a foreign merchant is made entirely in the local currency. The cardholder authorizes the purchase amount in the local currency, and the purchase price is not converted until the payment is processed.
When you make a purchase at an international store, you may be asked if you want to convert your purchase to your home currency. This service is provided at the point of sale as a value added service and allows you to know the converted price at that moment—but don’t be fooled; it comes at a cost.
While this may initially sound like a wise way to avoid fees, these charges are in addition to any foreign transaction fees your card may apply. These fees assessed by the merchant at the point of sale are called dynamic currency conversion or DCC. You can think of DCC as an added service and just like most services that make life easier, there’s a convenience charge. Plus, even when using DCC, you’ll usually be charged a foreign transaction fee by your card issuing bank unless your card has no foreign transaction fees."
[1] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/foreign-transact...
I suspect you're right: it depends on the specific card/bank, not whether it's credit or debit.
In South Africa where I live, anywhere that accepts cards accepts Visa and Mastercard. Outside of the "informal business" sector (e.g. tiny "businesses" like a roadside stall), card acceptance is so ubiquitous I don't carry cash anymore and it's very rarely an issue.
Because this is a thing in most of Europe. Most people don't own a creditcard, and those that do use it mostly for online purchases outside of the EU. I don't travel to another continent without looking up how to pay for things when I get there.
I think you wastly exegarate your observations.
> Why would you expect to be able to use a creditcard in a physical shop in the Netherlands?
And then
> Because this is a thing in most of Europe.
Netherlands' anti-credit card stance is quite unique, perhaps only matched by Germany and their obsession with cash.
It’s generally a good idea to learn something about your travel destination and not to assume everything there is the same as where you live. The world is big and diverse.
I think even AH accepts credit cards these days, though I haven't tried it myself.
Is that really true? I remember wanting to buy a train ticket at Charles De Gaulle airport, and the machine only took French credit cards. That was around 2010, so I don't know if something changed.
The wonderful French train company wouldn't refund the ticket either and instead insisted that we might use it one day on another trip to France. Thankfully by the time I got to the front of the line to chat in broken French to the ticket administrator, I had already accepted my fate after hearing a number of tourists (not Americans mind you) yell and stomp their feet uselessly in hopes of obtaining a refund.
[1] That was a fun adventure too. At CDG, well I found out later that taxis are "allowed" and are the same price as the Uber ride and so we could have avoided this by just taking a taxi through Uber, but a group of folks from Great Britain were ahead of me in line and I came across them later when looking for where to get a taxi/Uber. There were rideshare signs or something but they didn't lead anywhere that made sense. They seemed rather aspirational. Well, one of the members of the British group spoke good French (or good enough) and found out the secret spot to go after chatting with an airport employee I think it's at Terminal E (someone else may know for sure) or something and so my wife and I befriended the same British group and went along with them for the long walk over.
We were able to get a ride, though not cheap. Of course the bus was an option and we're no stranger, but we were on vacation and the $50 ride was just chalked up to the cost of doing business. We were already 2 hours behind schedule because of the train fiasco.
All that to say, I think using an American credit card these days is the least of your concerns. I was surprised to see American Express taken rather much more widely than anticipated. Be careful getting gas though as they place holds on your card for $250 or something like that, and once you get enough holds you can't get any more until the prior ones "roll off".
Those are partially or completely taken over not by the card network but by the bank that is issuing you the card, so a change in the underlying technology will be transparent.
It could be handled similarly to how tourists in Brazil can now use Brazil's Pix payment system.
One way Brazil handles it is with 3rd party digital wallets that tourists can install on their phones such as Wallbit [1]. Another way is with 3rd party services that let you pay from your own digital wallet or bank app and the service makes the Pix payment [2].
[1] https://www.wallbit.io/en/blog/brazilian-pix-and-a-payment-a...
[2] https://www.pagbrasil.com/lp/pix-for-international-travelers...
Thankfully Americans at least have enough purchasing power that the demand for convenience - just take my money with this card will keep us away from bad solutions in Europe.
Only sucks for the Americans though, I think most people non American countries will be fine with that
(Although you CAN pay with pix at many supermarkets, I'd rate it as rare. Also useable for online payments, but you take the risk in case of fraud, unlike with creditcards)
If you don't have the ability to accept a card at all, that's a different use case.
Business owners are forced to accept this situation because customers have your expectation. But it’s really not a good situation we’ve ended up in, letting for-profit, uncompetitive companies skim off the top of consumer spending. It’s frankly a rip-off.
Tap to pay could literally just come from your bank’s app.
In Brazil you can easily be paying 5-6% when accepting card payments, if not more. You'll generally get a 10% discount when opting to pay with cash in clothing/electronics/etc stores.
Selling something expensive? Well if a customer doesn't have the cash, by the time they go find an ATM (and pay a fee yay!) they probably changed their mind on the purchase.
There's a myriad of reasons to use cards (credit or debit). There's merits to using cash.
But, back to the actual discussion thread, there's no good reason to try and get tourists to use some convoluted app instead of just paying with a credit card.
I think your everyday credit/debit card is still objectively better overall, even moreso for tourists which was the main topic.
Not if you are paid in cash by your employer
We were until this guy joined in!
Why can't I just use my one debit card anywhere, why do I need to setup a separate card with a random app in another country, then another in another country etc.
My visa debit card allows me to travel virtually anywhere and use my own money without issue.
Anything else is just extremely inconvenient and technologically not really necessary
My visa debit card allows me to travel virtually anywhere and use my own money without issue.
Anything else is just extremely inconvenient and technologically not really necessary
Hard disagree. Until Covid, many small shops didn't take cards in Europe. Taxis, restaurants, market stalls, even trains were often cash only not that long ago. I in the UK ran accounts in companies that had people travel extensively in Europe. We used to issue travellers with EUR200 for the things that cards couldn't buy. Most shops didn't take Amex due to fees. Americans will either have to bring a compliant card or change some cash at the airport.
I also think you have misjudged the mood. I guarantee there are a large number of people in rural Europe that would be very happy never to meet another American tourist, even if it costs them. Americans can look forward to worse service everywhere. I wouldn't be suprised if some people in rural France refused to let you have the Calvados at all.
As for your second paragraph, you seem to be dreaming. Americans are some of the best tourists to deal with, and anybody who works in the tourism sector is happy to receive them.
A few years ago I shut down a website in Poland for someone because people didn't want to pay with cards, they wanted COD. My colleague took a train regularly in the Netherlands a few years back that was cash only. Dutch websites also have to offer whatever the Dutch payment provider is (I forget). Another colleague in rural Spain found that the price they were charged was lower if they paid cash by the exact amount of VAT. In Germany I ran a website that had to allow bank transfer as a payment method because 'companies generally don't have credit cards' according to the locals. Up until Covid travellers from our office to France and Germany always needed to use a few Euros. Up until Covid it was an absolute taboo to buy drinks with a card in the UK and Ireland, unless it was with a meal. My local chip shop is cash only today, but none of them had a machine before Covid. My local Chinese restaurant tells everyone the card machine is dodgy to see if they will pay cash. They only installed it during Covid.
I think we will manage without Visa just fine.
> and anybody who works in the tourism sector is happy to receive them.
Of course they are! That is literally their job. It is everyone else that has a problem with them.
As for your run-ins with card hostile businesses and people, you have the option to make your purchases with businesses who accept cards. Most customers choose that options, because cards offer the best protection and convenience for the customer. To the tune of the endless teeth grinding of some small business owners who think that their low profits are to blame on a tiny merchant fee.
I don't know what a few years back was, but I can't believe there was a train in NL that was cash at all for quite some time. In the past over 10 years it's always been an OV-chipkaart, and you can get an anonymous one that you pre-load with money. I'm not even sure if you can pay with cash, short of buying a ticket/loading the card from a person at a desk.
> Dutch websites also have to offer whatever the Dutch payment provider is (I forget).
iDeal, which Wero is based on.
About the only thing I use cash for in NL is paying for my barber as he doesn't take any card, and I'm pretty sure that's black money.
Germany has always had a bit of a relationship with cash, I'd always keep €1-200 in my pocket when I went there, though this is changing now.
> I think we will manage without Visa just fine.
There is also Cirrus and Maestro which are run by Visa and Mastercard, which appears on a lot of debit cards around the world, though I don't know exactly how it works (i.e. do the cards tend to use the local network within the country and only go to the cirrus etc. networks when international, or do they do it always?)
If you do not accept Visa and Mastercard you are not going to accept payments from all sorts of travellers (tourists, business people, people from your own country living abroad) either.
> I guarantee there are a large number of people in rural Europe that would be very happy never to meet another American tourist, even if it costs them.
Xenophobic or anti-tourism?
Opposed to what America has become.
If I went to another country and broke the law, got arrested - should I call that country xenophobic/anti-tourism/racist?
Who all stop in chain hotels, who will accept whatever you bring.
> Xenophobic or anti-tourism?
Anti-American tourism. I would say it is a mainstream opinion in Europe that American tourists are very annoying. Each country has its stereotypes about each other, usually stemming from WW2, but the feelings against American tourists have the wonderful effect of uniting Europe. Then America elected a president that threatened us first with economic sanctions, then war. Perhaps it is a fault in our characters, but we tend to take against people that threaten us with military action.
No, that's pretty much all European hotels actually. Hotels require credit cards for three reasons:
1. Security - if you leave the room a mess or destroyed there's an avenue for recourse.
2. To make more money - having a card on file for "incidentals" increases purchases from hotel guests.
3. Obtain payment - most people don't have the cash laying around to pony up to pay full nightly rates, nor do they have any desire carry thousands of Euros around on their person just to go pay in a large purchase at this conjured up local cash-only inn. It also makes your hotel property an easy target for robbery.
It's strange to me that you're taking such a hard stance over something that is obviously incorrect in order to... make fun of people from around the world who can only afford to stay in chain hotels on vacation?
I usually stay boutique properties which are sometimes, but not always managed by boutique property groups. They take credit cards. Every. Single. Time.
Can you provide the name of a single hotel in Europe that doesn't take credit cards?
>Can you provide the name of a single hotel in Europe that doesn't take credit cards?
Holy goalpost.
Show me a hotel in Europe that doesn't. Stop trying to associate credit card usage with foreign tourism in a negative light.
>take
So to be more clear: find me a hotel in Europe that doesn't require a credit card to book or have on file related to the reasons I stated above.
And separately, does that hotel accept credit cards?
By the way, American debit cards also run on Visa and Mastercard. So going back to the OP this idea of Europe "breaking up" with Visa and Mastercard is just not going to happen even if somehow whatever number of European businesses just stopped accepting credit cards.
I said the following in context of using credit cards:
> Buying a bottle of Calvados in some remote area? Yea just tap to pay with your Mastercard.
> Hard disagree.
graemep then wrote:
> It's not just American tourists. It's everyone from everywhere. If you do not accept Visa and Mastercard you are not going to accept payments from all sorts of travellers (tourists, business people, people from your own country living abroad) either.
Let's continue...
jimnotgym says:
> Who all stop in chain hotels, who will accept whatever you bring.
Here is where I highlighted why credit cards are used (and sure, debit cards too) and then claiming that every hotel in Europe takes credit cards.
And then afterward you've said a few things which, of course one of them I acknowledged using the wrong words for. Since then you've just been arguing points that aren't relevant to the conversation at hand. You at one point claimed you used a debit card at a hotel.
Great.
Find me a single hotel in Europe that doesn't take credit cards Why? Because jimnotgym is asserting credit cards "are a tourist thing" and are used only at chain hotels or hotels for tourist. I'm giving him a softball question and setting an extreme anchor point here. The vast majority of hotels in Europe take credit cards regardless of whether they are catering to "tourists" or not. That's a demonstrable fact. But do all hotels? I bet they do. Which goes to prove that credit card usage at hotels isn't limited to "tourists".
If you have any specific questions you'd like to ask, I'd be happy to answer them. I don't know what point you're trying to make here and it really seems like you've lost track of what the initial conversation was and now you're just arguing things that aren't being argued.
It works at the moment, here in France, with Swile (for instance)
The reality is more complicated.
I have had Visa or Mastercard being refused in other countries by some retail outlets / institutions.
In fact I never travel with only one card from a single bank because I always want to have a backup. And it is not really Visa vs Mastercard because I have had occurences of having 2 Visas, one of which would work and another would not on a specific shop for no obvious nor documented reason.
I agree the reality is a bit more complicated and even wrote about it in France when dealing with gas stations but what I wrote is broadly true. You can just take a credit card to Europe and the vast majority of the time you just won't need cash. I also agree it's a good idea to have a couple of cards though and maybe your debit card too. Frankly I do this in the US as well, and not just when traveling abroad.
It wouldn't be hacker news without a comment like this. I haven't personally worked in finance, but I've had a lot of friends do it.
It _absolutely_ is complicated. It's not too complicated for a nation or the EU to do it in house, but no, there's a bit more there than "Claude make me a ledger"
At any rate, making someone who haughtily trivializes a problem solve that same problem is a useful exercise both in the complexity of the subject matter, and—perhaps more importantly—in humility.
I'd argue this was the trolling
Now most merchants have to work with two companies, visa and mastercard. Want to accept russian MIR cards? Well, in some countries you're not allowed to, and in some, you must, since visa and mastercard don't work there. Now if you add a european company to the mix... whill their cards get accepted in south africa? What about in eg turkey? China? Will whatever indian alternative is get accepted in france?
Currently, with a visa and mastercard, except for maybe russia and iran, you're pretty sure it'll get accepted at least somewhere in any urban area you visit, so you won't be hungry and have somewhere to sleep. If my bank replaces my mastercard with the EU alternative, I won't be that confident about that for quite a few years.
On the other hand, cash is still the king of everything everywhere... somehow some politicians are trying to get rid of that for some reason.
Diners club? Well.. "it depends". Many don't work with it.
Indian, russian, chinese, cards? Maybe in india, russia and china, but you shouldn't expect it to work "everywhere" like visa and mastercard. Same will be true for EU cards for quite a few years, especially if the system gets fragmented into many different companies using many different systems, and you'll always wonder if your german card will get accepted in Algeria like your friends' french card is.
Thankfully, this use case has been solved by Russians themselves.
Regulation changes "why bother" to "oh crap".
This is the central power lever of the EU and one that is frequently underestimated.
European power projection doesn't work through tanks and aircraft carriers. It works with regulations, trade deals and economic incentives. Remember how a few years ago everyone was scrambling to get GDPR-compliant? That wasn't some random event. That was the EU projecting power.
Why do iPhones have USB-C now? European soft power.
Why are things like Champagne and Prosciutto di Parma protected brands that can only be sold if they're from the actual region? And I mean not just in Europe itself, but everywhere it has deals? Canada, Japan, India, China, Mercosur, etc etc? European soft power.
The EU is playing a different game from the other major players. Not one of brute force, but one of shifting the foundational rules of commerce in their favor. And they're very good at it.
1. Debit Mastercard/VISA. These are Debit Cards that use the Mastercard/VISA communication system to process transactions. While they are not "Credit" cards because you are using cash in an account that is your money, they rely upon the VISA/Mastercard system and merchants will be charged the Mastercard/VISA fee like a Credit Card.
2. Interac Debit Card. Interac was the first company to offer a debit card type system in Canada, and they are the traditional bank card. These cards use the Interac system (so does eTransfer) and Merchants are charged by Interac for using the system. Its typically less than Mastercard/VISA, which is why you see these "Debit Card only" signs.
3. Mastercard/VISA and Interac hybrid cards. These are newer and combine both Mastercard/VISA and Interac cards in one. The merchant can choose how they want to proceed.
Most of these "Debit" only signs are really saying "Interac only", but because for 30 years Interac was the only provider of Debit cards in Canada, it became the common vernacular to say "Debit" when you mean "Interac".
Visa and Mastercard exists because of US hegemony. The Europeans just put their heads in the sand for a long time and accepted the "superiority" of American payment solutions because it benefited their geopolitical play at the time.
Some sources (Old and New):
- https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/exclusive-visa-comp...
- https://jakartaglobe.id/business/indonesia-expands-qris-reac...
- https://www.china-briefing.com/news/wto-china-unionpay-rulin...
- https://valorinternational.globo.com/foreign-affairs/news/20...
I suspect there's quite a few other things you have to consider when you're managing trillions of dollars of transactions a year. Fraud, settlement times, up times, security, customer service, debt collection, interest rate calculation, reach, KYC, record keeping, legal inquiries.
But I'm sure we're just a couple grok comments away from a competitor
Hence why crypto hasn't taken off with merchants. Because who's going to pay for merchants to change their point-of-sale systems to accept a new payment method.
I would agree that BTC and many assets are a terrible payment method due to poor UX (block time, clunky wallets), speculation, and wild price swings. But crypto in general works well for payments I would say.
Transaction fees have improved significantly where it can be on the order of a few cents per transaction. So yes this is a little high for a $1 candy bar but this is fantastic for a $1,000 watch.
The number of chains and interoperability is a bit of a pain at the moment, but this problem can be resolved by delegating to a payment processor, or simply targetting ETH, the top stablecoins, and BTC which account for the vast majority of the market.
> Expensive and difficult to run
Again I am biased because of my experience, but I could set up a payment gateway for ETH in a few hours using free public nodes at virtually no cost. No business overhead. No agreements with payment processors or card companies. The biggest cost and overhead ends up being accounting, because crypto still has ill defined laws and regulation.
Just dealing with fraud is a major problem in itself.
That is why national payment systems tend to work relatively well. Cross border systems are a completely different challenge.
Roughly nobody argues that part is difficult.
> It's not complicated.
It's very complicated, for the reasons that all complex real world systems are. It's an absolute mess.
> Time to do away with these foreign entities.
I don't really mind the "foreign" part, but it's fairly wild that essential financial infrastructure is privatized, so let's!
Any cross border payment solution, even within Europe, that lacks strong fraud protection is dead on arrival.
But I suspect the fraud problem will be ignored until it cannot be ignored anymore. And then we will go back to square one and try everything again.
Convincing your neighbors to build a refugee shelter in your neighborhood is difficult, and it's not like we have a shortage of house-building knowledge.
It’s about the cost of another employee in salary per year for restaurants.
While many other countries employ pay by QR code which is free.
In which countries is this service free? Alipay and Wechat are probably the biggest actors in this space both take a cut.
Knowing the card will always work 24/7/365 with such a high degree of assurance is a non-zero factor in how well a consumer economy performs.
Honestly its a few things.
No, the technical and financial implementation is quite complicated. Its not just a balance in a database.
Yes, they do maintain control through a vertically integrated business structure. But its very easy to justify due to risk management.
>No, these companies keep themselves in power not because they've solved such a difficult problem that nobody else can, but because they have a moat which they protect.
The moat is the difficulty. And they do protect it.
Theres a common type of customer in IT who thinks they can do everything themselves and the "finding out" phase of their shenanigans is often extremely costly, not just for themselves but for their customers.
The chief product of a good supplier is not just software or technical services, its the regimented and disciplined implementation of those services.
Some people will pay more for an IT provider who permits less because they lack the internal organizational discipline to do these things correctly for themselves.
As far as various governments are concerned, the payment card industry is largely self regulating. And that's because the apex card providers provide the balance of enforcement downstream to all the nitwits who would otherwise have to be stung by hundreds of security lapses before they would otherwise respond. The PCI SSC has created an environment where data security is more restrictive than most polity's would require, and its standards are applied worldwide. Often people get liability exemptions for meeting this standard, rather than the standard itself being enforced by legislation or regulation.
Governments honestly love this shit. Its like catnip.
And if you had 1 tiny look behind the curtains of a merchant credit card processor, you would see that they would abandon this level of compliance at the drop of a hat were they permitted. The glue that holds the whole thing together is the restricted access to global Visa and Mastercard payment processing.
If you think all this is trivial, demonstrate how trivial it is, and spin up your own cards, card payment platform, various interconnects and clearing houses. I think you would much more quickly assemble a working computer out of a kids sandpit. Shit I remember a bunch of crypto projects sought to replace Visa and Mastercard, the best we got was Crypto branded Visas and Mastercards.