[avianlyric]

Visa/Mastercard aren’t as ubiquitous as people imagine, despite Visa/Mastercard trying to acquire their way to global market dominance.

The are many developed and developing countries that operate their own card networks, peer-to-peer payment technologies, and generally cheaper faster alternatives to Mastercard/Visa, with many merchants preferring them to their U.S. counterparts.

Visa/Mastercard may have dominance in the English speaking west, and many tourists location for the English speaking west, but assuming Visa/Mastercard is some gold standard the world should aspire to is very naïve. In reality alternatives like UPI and other peer-to-peer systems are more likely to be the payment systems of the future. Continued Mastercard/Visa dominance in its current form only really makes sense in countries with outdated and inadequate banking infrastructure, like the U.S.

[kmlx]

> In reality alternatives like UPI and other peer-to-peer systems are more likely to be the payment systems of the future.

i find that very hard to believe as the user interaction for qr codes is a step backwards from using an nfc with a phone’s wallet. and once you use the nfc solution it’s very hard to switch back to a system that is less friendly.

of course, if you take the QR codes out of the equation and replace with NFC then i see no issues.

> Continued Mastercard/Visa dominance in its current form only really makes sense in countries with outdated and inadequate banking infrastructure, like the U.S.

you are wrong. if anything the system is getting more widely used. europe for example has very advanced banking infra and is all in on nfc, with mastercard/visa/amex widely accepted, and the system is being adopted everywhere.

[avianlyric]

> of course, if you take the QR codes out of the equation and replace with NFC then i see no issues.

There’s no reason p2p payments can’t operate over NFC. It’s just a short distance communication technology, it’s little more than an implementation detail in a payment network, and not significant to fundamental operation or economics of a payment network.

The fact Mastercard/Visa have a monopoly on NFC payments on phones is a big reason why the EU is investigating ApplePay and Apple NFC API restrictions.

> you are wrong. if anything the system is getting more widely used. europe for example has very advanced banking infra and is all in on nfc

I don’t think you appreciate the timeline here. Contactless payments have existed in Europe for over a decade, it basically at peak adoption already. Alternative P2P payments and technology like OpenBanking is only just getting started, and Mastercard/Visa are already worried, they’ve already made big acquisitions in Open Banking tech and alternative payment networks to ensure they don’t get cut out of the profits long term.

Ultimately payment technologies are chosen by merchants, not customers. If alternatives offer cheaper payments, and more importantly, faster merchant settlement, then merchants are going to start exploring those options. If companies like Apple are forced to open up their NFC stacks, and let others build alternative wallet and payment networks on them, then Mastercard/Visa current technical advantage will disappear very quickly.

That very advanced banking infra you speak off will forms the backbone of alternative payment technologies, why would anyone want to pay a middleman for a service their bank can provide directly, and provide much cheaper?

[pb7]

> why would anyone want to pay a middleman for a service their bank can provide directly, and provide much cheaper?

Visitors can show up and immediately pay for things with ease, for one.

[avianlyric]

There’s no reason why alternatives won’t achieve the same ubiquity in the future. The EU has already built the common infrastructure that makes inter-county bank transfers instant and seamless. Honestly only Americans seem to struggle with the idea that companies like Visa/Mastercard/Paypal/Venmo are just symptoms of a dysfunctional banking system, not some incredibly new and innovative way to move money.