I like how Visa/Master Card are shutting "indecent" games down, but have no fucking issues with twitter generating CSAM.

Here in Czechia you can pay for online transactions with instant direct bank transfer, so cards are not really needed. This is often used for direct transfers between individuals where one generates a QR code on his phone and the other scans it.

I live in a country where it has become in a sense illegal not to be listed at an address. If you are not listed at an address, the government flags you as a missing person. If that happens, the banks lock you out of government ID, which is necessary to do basically any type of online banking, and if you have any funds behind an electronic ID wall, you won't be able to access them.

Recently visited a country where cash is very much preferred and it was such a breath of fresh air. I thought it would be annoying to have to keep up with the spare change and what not but it was fine and actually felt pretty good. I've since started using cash a lot more at home.

Well this means that there is still a payment provider doing the barcode system. This payment provider could still block certain vendors. It works excellently to protect the privacy of the buyer, though.

I still don't know why USians don't simply use bank transfers. Uses neither cash nor credit cards, perfectly easy.

I wonder where that puritan far right "women's rights" advocacy group is now that Twitter is generating CSAM and non consensual AI generated material, or maybe the purpose was always to punch down on independent artists.

We now have the technological means to make online payments better in many ways for both customers and vendors. We just need to move away from one of the biggest American exports, middlemen.

Visa/MasterCard is a tax in every transaction. You might not see it but it is there.

I consulted for a luxury brand on e-commerce for a bit and I was surprised how important credit card splitting was to their American business.

Like, people splitting a purchase across multiple cards because they were so close to the max for each.

I questioned how much time we were spending on it but they assured me it was a common use case.

No. In Sweden, 99% of all payments are cahsless. Most stores don't even take cash anymore.

We still have plenty of (digital) options for payment in addition to Visa/Mastercard.

In my view, it's actually the opposite. The more digital paymenst are used, the higher the incentive to create a competing payment solution. Swish and Klarna are taking over more and more here.

Wow, I had no idea you could do that in Japan, and the idea never crossed my mind.

That's a brilliant solution to online payments.

There's always money in the banana stand.

This is still a digital transaction that has to go through a third party. Whoever runs this kind of barcode kiosk system would still wield the exact same kind of power that Mastercard and Visa do.

I wish I could pay in cash for online purchases from Amazon. Amazon has such a privacy nightmare that I cannot even hide or delete my purchase history. I know deleting the history doesn't remove the trait or nullify anything, but the fact that it remains visible on your account is stupid. There are purchases that I dont want anyone looking at my account to know and sometimes I just like clearing it. I don't care for shit I bought back in 2018 anymore.

I nearly universally refuse to use a debit card and use a credit card for everything and then pay it off every month. The system is broken, but this is the best use of the system.

This kinda requires having a heavily consolidated convenience store industry with a lot of locations. Japan has both of these the US not so much. Urban sprawl, a physically larger country, and a culture of not using convenience stores as much kinda make this hard. Also said stores would likely need to register AML and KYC controls.

Norway has an app called Vipps, released by the national bank. When first introduced it was primarily aimed towards payment from person to person, linked to phone numbers. But most online vendors accept it as a form of payment too.

I forgot my wallet while at the grocery store the other day, and using what little charm I have I managed to get the cashier to pay for me, and I Vippsed him the money owed.

@ontariobay in Brazil there is the PIX, it is an instant payment between almost any bank account, in the first year it was introduced you could use it to pay for almost anything, online or in person, it usually approves in less than a second and there is no fee.

In Brazil you can use a central bank system called pix. Everyone with a bank account has it. You can send money to any phone number registered on pix and everyone accepts it.

All banks support it so people can use it anywhere with anyone. Also we support a system like Japan with barcode but since pix people are using it less

There is this herbal thing that the fda was trying to shut down in a fact free reefer madness esque type campaign, kratom, that endangered drug company profits by amongst other things allowing people to wean themselves off opioids by taking the edge of withdrawals with it. Big business.

Anyway after failing because people in the west organized to defend their rights, the FDA leaned on the credit card companies to not process their transactions. The companies found some out of the country vendor that was willing to process them before long but for a short bit people had to use electronic checks. Which banks are funny about, no one knows how untrustworthy banks are like other banks I figure.

But idk the vendor, the visa and mastercard both work on this. But I've heard of the government doing this a couple of times since, and some private church group doing it to steam to get them to remove some game or something.