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Comment by jdeisenberg | Hacker News Reader

Possibly waiting for a reasonable replacement for US tech. For example, if the US should decide to shut off MasterCard and VISA services to Europe, it would create non-trivial difficulties for the European banking system.

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its also a one time trick for america, similar to the strait of hormuz

it would be so disruptive that europe would have to make and use an alternative, and then the US could not regain that market

Now imagine the costs for the oligarchs to let that not happen. 'Might makes right' also applies internally. When the rules don't apply you will see fiefdoms eating each other and white collar crime cranked up to the max. In these dynamics there is a reason to get from your clan a tsar in power who can guarantee some level of stability. If you see a lot of sycophancy displayed around the don you know why.

There is a reason the US is worried about things like Pix is Brazil. Viable alternatives are coming online that cuts them out of the set of power.

And UPI in India. And you know what? Those systems are working better than the US systems do.

In Europe there's Weego or whatever it's called which is just a standardized QR code layer on top of the instant SEPA payments you can already do?

EU has started that with the Wero project.

https://wero-wallet.eu/

But this can also just be removed from the app stores and the developer certificates can be revoked. Due to the centralized control and distribution of software on smartphones, no smartphone based payment system is really sovereign - it only exists because the US allows it to.

ability to sideload would help greatly

Yes, but Google is making that a lot more difficult soon, at least on stock Android

Except that's a very different threat than with Credit cards. Sure Google could do that, but Europe could even just make their own android fork if they wanted and that would be far easier than replacing the whole credit card system. And I doubt they would even need to fork Android, they could side load, or just make their own app store and require it to be installed on phones sold in the EU.

It's not a trivial task, but yes, they could and should. They could also just officially start supporting existing android alternatives such as GrapheneOS by requiring banks and government ID apps to be independent of Play Integrity, which can be done today for very little money and effort.

Sideloading is not at option from 2027 since it will be made much much more difficult than it is today, requiring users to enable it via developer options and wait 24 hours.

Google and Apple comply with EU law for some reason. Probably because they want to sell phones.

What law gives a developer the right to be published on app stores? And why would it make a difference if the US administration sanctions the EU?

Let them do it once. Please. Even if there a hint of threating to shutdown -that would make EU leaders act. Otherwise they dont act or react.

Pretty sure they will order 3rd party stores to open up. Sure, iPhone users are f'ked but at least Android will prove itself.

Wow, I did not know about this one. Imagine if every country goes this route, and then there is a direct integration between central banks?

The banking system would probably be fine, only card payments would suffer but there are mostly already alternatives available.

Europe just needs to have its own clearing center. Russia did this, and cards work internally without any trouble. As a nice bonus, transaction information does not go to US.

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