Can Europe wean itself off US credit card firms?

Can Europe wean itself off US credit card firms? – DW – 05/02/2025

1w ago

34 comments

could and should
- At this point all American corporations are a threat to global security
  
  at least potentially, yes

Absolutely. It’ll take effort, but we probably shouldn’t have these crazy powerful multinational credit card companies.
I write this as a US citizen. They’re way too powerful.

The digital euro project is the only project that has a proper chance of succeeding here because it would be forced on every country using euro. All the other solution usually end at the border of the country of origin or because it is inconvenient for the users so swich to a new solution that has no benefits over paying with Visa or Mastercard. Here is a great video about it: https://youtu.be/1Al3ZIFUQ5U
- And here's the official spiel from the central bank.

The EU does already have them under some control. They restrict MC/VISA transaction fees to like 0.3% - literally the day Brexit happened the fees went up to 1.5%. However that was all before covid, no idea what fees are everywhere now.
- True. Still better to have leftover expenses be left in EU than to "export" them all to USA.

There are good solutions and next year will hopefully iterate on that. Read into PSD2 and PSD3.
- Yeah, every single European bank is hard at work implementing these directives. I’ve been working on that myself with many companies
  
  Uh nice, would you like to share where you work?
  I just finished by bachelors thesis in this topic.

I sure hope so.
MasterVisa are run by christofascists. They are really problematic in the adult media sector, denying services to websites unless they adhere to certain restrictions or depictions. For example, no minotaur sex in Seeds of Chaos. Considering the nature of the Trump Regime, you can expect vanilla stuff like gay podcasts to eventually be fully subjected to censorship. The grasping arm of "American" oligarch sensibilities will reach for Europe's people.
For the liberty of everyone, we need payment processors who are disinterested in dictating the culture of their users.

Although that would be a win, European alternatives are not much better in terms of privacy. If that's something you're looking forward to.
Pretty much all methods of online payment require you to give away your identity in the name of fighting "money laundering" and terrorism (Israel doesn't count). You have a system where the government is constantly trying to reach its tentacles into everything that has to do with finance. The current European payment services are an important part in facilitating that control. A new European debit/credit card is not going to change that.
- At least then no longer will be a portion of the money sent out of Europe as commission/fees.

TIL VISA is actually a US company.
Visa is probably the most common in the EU? We'd need a replacement for that.
... oh, Germany already has it, with 70% marketshare!

34 comments