[bediger4000]

This situation (Visa and MasterCard determining what's acceptable or not commercially on the internet) is a side effect of having privatized electronic money. The US federal government runs the ACH system for free, and it works fine. The feds could have done electronic money, and it could have been more secure and less costly, But noooooo, we had to have a market based solution. The consequences include a few unelected CEOs making decisions about what's pornographic and what isn't, and it's safer to assume that the entire system is corrupted.

[ethan_smith]

Government-run electronic payment systems would face enormous technical scaling challenges, security vulnerabilities, and implementation costs that likely exceed private systems when accounting for taxpayer burden and bureaucratic inefficiencies.

[idle_zealot]

Oh, dang, really? I'll have to go inform every country that uses a government epay system that actually they should let MasterCard take over.

[bediger4000]

Security vulnerabilities on the scale of the "carding" market? There's entire cybercrime sectors based on various forms of credit card fraud. Given the UK's "phantom withdrawal" situation 25-30 years ago, it wouldn't surprise me in the least to hear of a credit card issuing bank or two being entirely fraudulent.

[fmobus]

Pix sends its regards.

It costs the Brazilian government around $10M yearly to maintain[1]. A bargain.

[1] https://www.infomoney.com.br/economia/custo-para-manter-pix-...