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by n3d1m 2839 days ago
Nothing stopping them. And I wish they would. The MC/Visa duopoly needs to be disrupted.
3 comments

What, and replaced with another monopoly?
Or a duopoly of Stripe and Applepay?
The MC/Visa duopoly needs to be disrupted.

Yes, but not by anything even vaguely resembling credit cards as we know them today. The whole system is insecure, inefficient and unreliable by design, and the credit aspect introduces an extra level of legal and financial mess, particularly for those people who just want a convenient payment method but don't actually need to defer settlement. Card payments may be the perfect example of the dangers of monopolies and oligopolies.

>nothing is stopping them.

I'm guessing their Network agreements with Visa and MasterCard would stop them. You could issue a stripe card that only works with stripe merchants. But I can't imagine visa allowing their imprint on a card that can both process anywhere AND be used to slowly cut visa out of the picture.

Many European cards have both the VISA logo and also a national chip&pin debit scheme that has nothing to do with VISA.