Visa does indeed have a near-stranglehold on financial transactions, and the reason is that US governments make it nearly impossible to set up a competing finan

Visa does indeed have a near-stranglehold on financial transactions, and the reason is that US governments make it nearly impossible to set up a competing financial transaction processing system. It's generally regarded on HN that it would be legally impossible to create Paypal today, and I believe this is accurate. There is a famous series of HN posts from some startup trying to get into this space (sorry, can't remember the details - maybe someone else can fill in). The horrorshow of getting "money transmitter licenses" and working through compliance issues in 50 different states (plus federal) made it impossible. There is not a free market for transaction processing in this country. A small handful of companies are grandfathered into what is effectively a government enforced monopoly. So they need to be treated like the quasi-public utilities they are.