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this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2025
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What are the alternatives to Visa/Mastercard?
Discover, American Express, Diner’s Club, and the one that still rules them all, Cash. There are probably others, but Visa and Mastercard are the two largest.
How do I transfer my cash to online stores?
You can in Japan apparently. They have a system where you can go to convenience store and pay by scanning a code
You can also sorta use zelle, but the technical integration is not great. It's a very manual process as it is
Ultimately, the problem is we let two companies dominate commerce itself. We just need to let the governmet do payment processing, and require compatibility
Japan also accepts bank transfer for online payments. So you don't even need to leave your house.
Interac if you're Canadian, and if the store accepts e-transfers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interac
How hard can you throw?
Amex gift cards. Cashapp uses Block(Square) for their payment processing, which is easier to use because you can transfer funds to that from your bank.
There are a lot of places going cashless these days. Heck some of my kids friend went to target and couldn't buy anything because target didn't have the staff to run anything but the self checkout, which at this place didn't accept cash. They had to leave empty-handed.
Visa and MasterCard really are the only two you see in Europe
Discover and Diners Club merged a few years ago btw. Discover also has an alliance with JCB.
So Discover network is actually really, really big.
In Canada, I'd like to see Interac develop into one. Hopefully more prominence wouldn't ruin it
Edit:
Never mind. It would be inevitable.
In Italy, there's a debit card circuit called PagoBancomat.
Italy also has a digital-only payment system called Satispay. Denmark and Finland have MobilePay (which is way better than Satispay). Sweden has Swish.
Your country may have something similar, look it up. And then you can always pay with PayPal by connecting your bank account directly, with no cards involved (at least in Europe).
At the cost of a less stable value, you can convert your currency to BTC, store it on a physical wallet like those made by Ledger and self-host BTCPay Server to make receiving money easier (alt cryptocurrency available via integrations). As for spending, that depends entirely on the recipient cooperating and accepting BTC. There are also 'payment gateways' that should help, including self-hosting a verifiable debit card. I'm still looking into it.
No thanks. It's not for me.
How is an even more niche process that involves having to go to an exchange to buy crypto then safe guard it and it being a taxable event when buying goods with it in some countries a solution?
People are wanting a mainstream alternative that the companies that they buy from use, and if the companies don't care to use it then it doesn't matter for the average person.
Even people actually into crypto are less interested in spending it because it exposes their balance if they aren't using coin mixers or monero which can make them a target. Not to mention most just see it as stock they hope goes to the moon as opposed to going through the cumbersome process of buying for the purpose of spending it like a depreciating asset.
Unfortunately crypto is already complicated as is. And as the other user said bitcoin isn't the best choice. Monero would be as close to the overall goal as it is possible.
Now using monero would be more anonymous than credit/debit cards making it a better option - but not many vendors support it, and cash is just simpler than any other option.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnionPay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_(payment_system)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JCB_(credit_card_company)
Didn't know that, thanks