Visa, Mastercard and Swift have spent a lot of time and effort lobbying their _de facto_ monopoly, carefully advocating that… for lack of a better phrasing: the

Visa, Mastercard and Swift have spent a lot of time and effort lobbying their _de facto_ monopoly, carefully advocating that… for lack of a better phrasing: they are essential and facilities but not “essential facilities”. The best example of something impressive in that area is the concept of Two-sided markets, that comes with natural, customer-benefiting monopoly and even a justification for aggressive dumping baked-in in the model. I’m personally familiar with several of the contributors to that area and I can’t suspect that was ‘sponsored’ research but, Lord, you have to be lucky to get a Nobel prize to defend you.