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IMHO the only worthwhile competition to the "international payments cartel", as the author puts it, could be something Blockchain based. Decentralized and by so

IMHO the only worthwhile competition to the "international payments cartel", as the author puts it, could be something Blockchain based. Decentralized and by some algorithm protected from a sudden surge in fees. I know lots of people have an opinion on what cryptocurrency could be the one but I think we simply aren't there yet. Personally I feel that Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum has the best project at hand to accomplish anything as big as an VISA/Mastercard killer (in terms of scalability) but at the moment we are not there. Decentralisation however just makes so much sense in order to protect both sides from shady behaviour from the middleman. Just take a look at the adult entertainment industry, who are mostly unable to process credit cards without giving up enormous chunks of their revenue, just because the big two refuse their business. That said, cash will always have the advantage of relative easy and effective anonymity. I find it troubling that people are so eager to give up on such an essential feature of their money.

decentralised 8y ago
I agree with you, if you look at the work being done around Zero Knowledge proofs the future of private transactions on-chain seems really very promising.
hakfoo 8y ago
I always pictured there would be some "assertive" state actor involved to create a true Visa/MC/etc-killer. You could say something like "our central bank offers a basic push and pull payment API, and there's an account created for every citizen/resident. It's going to be used to disburse social security and accept tax payments, so everyone's going to have to learn to work with it." Maybe add some sort of plastic-card based infrastructure for convenient transactions without smartphones or PCs. Adding credit-based products on top of that feels like a fairly trivial endeavour. This would seemingly be a feasible sell to many governments with the right spin (reduction in processing costs for their own payments, fraud control, data gathering, reducing reliance on foreign-controlled payment services, adding another means of capital control) It also seems reasonable within the same sort of "government needs to provide the basic infrastructure for a modern financial system" scope that allows for government "lenders of last resort", bank insurance, and clearing houses for cheques. Then the question for Visa/MC/etc becomes "what can you offer these consumers and retailers that the local service doesn't except higher fees?" aside from the corner case of "you can use it abroad more easily".

decentralised 8y ago

I agree with you, if you look at the work being done around Zero Knowledge proofs the future of private transactions on-chain seems really very promising.

hakfoo 8y ago

I always pictured there would be some "assertive" state actor involved to create a true Visa/MC/etc-killer. You could say something like "our central bank offers a basic push and pull payment API, and there's an account created for every citizen/resident. It's going to be used to disburse social security and accept tax payments, so everyone's going to have to learn to work with it." Maybe add some sort of plastic-card based infrastructure for convenient transactions without smartphones or PCs. Adding credit-based products on top of that feels like a fairly trivial endeavour. This would seemingly be a feasible sell to many governments with the right spin (reduction in processing costs for their own payments, fraud control, data gathering, reducing reliance on foreign-controlled payment services, adding another means of capital control) It also seems reasonable within the same sort of "government needs to provide the basic infrastructure for a modern financial system" scope that allows for government "lenders of last resort", bank insurance, and clearing houses for cheques. Then the question for Visa/MC/etc becomes "what can you offer these consumers and retailers that the local service doesn't except higher fees?" aside from the corner case of "you can use it abroad more easily".