[richardknop]

In theory what you are describing sounds appealing. One more issue I thought about is in a case this system ever became a thing, Visa/Mastercard could just lower their fees. Pretty sure they are still profitable even with much lower fees so there's a chance they could still outperform this plasma system since their centralised system will be more efficient and will allow them to have even lower fees. It would be good to have a competition to force Visa/MC to lower their fees though. And other payment processors. They are getting away with insane profits right now.

Also I don't think it's possible to rollout a system like this in China due to the government there. They would not allow a a system they don't control to be used. So it would have to be in some relatively free country where you would have to implement this.