If anything, I'm really glad how Europe has stepped up and started cooperating more as a consequence of US actions these past few months.

Please expand it to Canada too. We need a real alternative to Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover.

Too bad about crypto.

This is the exact kind of situation it was meant to deal with: finance independent of bad entities. But it’s such a dumpster fire…

I don’t think there’s a purer example of social media engagement hype, predatory capitalism, and disinformation ruining something neat so quick.

GNU Taler seems to be a good thing to look into. Not a crypto currency but a payment system which preserves anonymity of the buyer.

Cashless payment is fucked. Using a phone to pay with? Sorry, only google wallet or apple pay, and in most cases only visa or mastercard. It's only recently that that Danish "Dankortet" is getting support in those apps. Bit fucking late, but US led companies don't give a fuck.

There's Wero, a European alternative to VISA and Mastercard.

I would love to have an EU bank card. Hope we get one soon.

I really hope that the EU introduces a global payment and banking system that is agnostic. I don't want to be under MasterVisa's thumb, and would prefer to keep the bulk of my money as Euros instead of American Dollars. Problem is, as an American, I can't readily use Euros in my daily life.

Here's hoping the EU can strike up a solution with Blue States, so that I don't need to ask Musk for permission to buy anything.

Don't let the Christians get up in there and dictate what you can and can't buy with it

This is a worry for me. I opened an ebay.co.uk account in 2004. You had to pay for purchases via Paypal. I had all sorts of problems using Paypal and customer care was lousy. I started looking into Paypal and decided it was unethical. I opted out. Ever since, I have been looking for more ethical financial services. When I cannot find them, I just do without stuff.

Right now, I have allegedly ethical bank accounts with Co-Op Bank (UK), Smile Bank (UK) and Triodos (EU). I have a savings account with a community-run credit union (UK) and a prepaid debit card account through my trade union for online purchases (UK). This is good enough for UK-based activity. But I often need to send money abroad e.g. to charities in other countries or to support podcasts or creatives based abroad. I am asked to fund via USA resources like Patreon and I refuse. I want an ethical alternative.

I want to see each nation (or groups like the EU) create its own local resources and make them compatible with other nations via some exchange service that guarantees secure, quick, ethical transactions. I am glad EU is starting to do this, it is decades overdue. I guess UK will drag itself forward eventually but only after we get a government able to live in the here and now instead of the C20th like Starmer does - I suspect he has not had a new idea since 1995. He's younger than me but his mental processes make him seem like my grandfather. Oh, for some young people in government!

P.S. Hello, Media Storm, UK prize-winning investigative journalism podcast. You are great but I cannot fund you as you use oligarch-owned Patreon and communicate only via oligarch-run Instagram or gmail - if you read this, set up some UK-based, ethical comms or funding account and I will set up a monthly subscription. I will email you about this using mediastormpodcast(at)gmail.com but I resent it.

The EU plans this for many year, but the problem is every country is doing its own thing with its own standard, that is not working anywhere else. In Germany for example we have Giropay as a solution, which doesn't work in other countries. As it turns out, people move though, that's why for a couple of years now every bank is switching to VISA debit cards...

We're so capable, it's crazy we needed to be threatened to realize it.

We got UPI in india and it's amazing. You use it and feel like the rest of the world is living in the past.

The problem is the dollar. While international trade is in US dollars, US can dominate global economy. But Trump is trashing dollar and promoting crypto. How long will the dollar remain default currency? I think when dollar loses its value, USA economy will crash harder than any crash in history. Wheelbarrows of dollars will not buy matches. Will another traditional currency replace the dollar or is dollar's fall a sign that the old system no longer works for any currency. How does economics function after money fails? Are we all going to have to use crypto? How does that work? I hope some expert in economics has worked out a plan. I doubt they have though, this is all unchartered territory.

Portugal has it's own network, Multibanco, and I know our central bank is working on a system targeted to the SEPA+ area. We already can send money to each other usong our phone number and our fiscal number.

Please let's think this ALL THE WAY: it is pointless to look for alternatives to the customer facing part if the backend still runs on US software.

Yes it'd s called GNU-Taler, Chief

Try it, you might just like it ;-)

Cash is king

I'm a firm believer in payment neutrality. Visa and Mastercard as payment processors should neither be held liable for what payments go through their pipes, but at the same time they cannot stop any payment going through their pipes.

For all things like money laundering etc. Those must be handled by banks and the government, not the payment processor. Visa and Mastercard are just pipes for money to travel through, not banks.

It's weird that this hasn't already long since happened. Most every Asian country I've been to has had its own local payment systems.

There seems to be this idea that Visa & Mastercard are somehow too big to be usurped, but it's all illusion.