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 offe

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".