1435
Europe’s $24 Trillion Breakup With Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
(europeanbusinessmagazine.com)
great news
we need more alternatives to Visa and Mastercard.
this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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I'm all for Europe doing their own thing. I'm an American and even I hate seeing the US use it's position for bully politics. No citizen of any other country should ever thing that an American company or govt will treat them with dignity or respect. Look at how we treat each other.
Why do Visa and MasterCard exist? The middleman that jacks up the price while offering the end user nothing? Thanks capitalism.
There was a time back in the day it was useful.
Before smartphones, credit cards were the cashless option.
Now that we all have a more than capable payment terminal in our pocket, Visa and mastercard are obsolete
Sorta. Whomever does payment on your behalf has to be willing to extend credit for an immediate transaction while the very slow process of exchanging money happens at a delay. This is especially so if the transactions are international. I truly wonder how the phone with just an ordinary bank account does this. Is it Google/Apple who extend credit? If so, is that better?
Most other countries don't have to rely on the antiquated network the US uses for resolving those bank to bank transactions. In South korea, Street vendors have what looks like a phone number posted on signage around their Wares or snacks and people just make effectively debit pushes from their bank to the merchant's bank in real time with zero margins.
I kind of expect this is how the rest of the world operates and it's only the us then sits on using its own infrastructure which it made one time, in the 1960s, and has refused to move off of since. This created a lot of the market need for a bunch of private companies to make their own little piggybacking solutions like venmo, zelle, square cash, and all the others.
Too be fair, a lot of major businesses in the US now just exist as financialization institutions extending debt to their large-scale clientele, under the guise of being manufacturing or data services. Like GM. Or Oracle.
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uh...NFC payments work through V/M.
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Great news. In India we have UPI which already made Mastercard and Visa come to their knees.
Just if it worked with international payments.
Currently, International GPay required a credit/debit card and I am unaware of a proper UPI solution for it.
Also, we lack proper FOSS UPI for Linux despite efforts, due to it being dependent on cellular networks.
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Nice. We have JCB in Japan but I think it piggybacks off VISA/Mastercard for overseas transactions. It'd be cool if it partnered up with a European counterpart for purchases made in the EU.
We have JCB as well but only for digging holes and moving earth.
I suppose I could do that too with my JCB, but it would take ages to get anything done since the card isn't very big or durable!
I wonder how many trillions of dollars the Trump dumpster fire will end up costing American business.
You'd think our corporate overlords would remove him.
Let's say the pre-Trump economy is worth $100 trillion, and a particular billionaire's share is $2 billion. Let's say Trump catastrophically decreases the economy's value to $50 trillion, while increasing corruption such that that Trump is getting more power, and the billionaire's share is $10 billion.
This is followed by a collapsing market that creates a dip in share prices or private valuation, the assets of which can be bought for pennies on the dollar, eventually leading to that billionaire having $30 billion in a total economy worth $20 trillion.
Win/win for Trump and the billionaire, at the cost of everyone else.
That's basically what's happening, and will continue to happen.
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At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they're working on it. He's destroying their bottom lines.
That said, if you go after the king, you'd best not miss.
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Hello, friends in civilized lands, especially those of you who work at financial institutions...
Some of us in the states are excited to watch you do some damage to the entrenched middlemen that have been skimming from all of us for so long. Please do consider letting us sign up for the new stuff. Our money is still worth something, for now!
I agree 100% but also this is like when you watch your brother punch your dad to make him stop hitting your mom, and you know you're going to get the shit kicked out of both of you later for it.
...unless one of your grabs the crowbar and goes for broke...
Hey blue states...
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Seconded.
i would gladly make the switch if for no other reason than just playing a tiny part in screwing over Visa and MasterCard.
Why? Cause fuck em! That's why!
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I think the Digital Euro is going to be a better idea long term - taking off the hidden tax of payment processor fees is going to make businesses and people richer.
Don’t you think it has some privacy concerns? And how does it affect small businesses relying on cash? I’m asking genuinely, these are intuitive and not well thought out concerns.
Good. The Mastercard and Visa tax never made any sense. We deserve better.
if Turkey was able to do it with Troy, why not Europe with Wero? Hope it all goes well
Turkish person here: Troy is not yet that popular, but it is slowly getting there. Give it another 5 years. The best example is probably Brazil's Pix.
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Interesting
Efforts are underway to expand the international e-commerce presence of TROY, which is already widely used and 100% accepted at all retail locations and e-commerce platforms across Turkey.
source Translated with translate.kagi.com
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reminds me when Brazil launched their Pix payment system nationwide, which is free for individuals, and the US launched an investigation into unfair trading
potential unfair advantaging of Brazilian payment services over US competitors was cited
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has accused US president Donald Trump of being "bothered by Pix" because it "will put an end to credit cards"
lol get rekt
Against what? Against consumers that don't need to pay fees? Against the Brazilian government who is behind the pix?
Poor US companies with billionaires yatches bills to be paid.
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Costco broke up with VISA so, it's possible. Re-establish the Templars again as the new money lenders from old.
What Would Jesus Do? Probably burn down banks and most churches.
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I'm glad to see Visa suffer, but I'm pretty concerned that Wero requires a proprietary phone app. There is no way to shop using Wero without this proprietary software.
Wero is intregrated into the banking apps we already have. In Germany the banks ING, Volksbank and Sparkasse already implemented it.
That's just a different proprietary app though.
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It doesn't require an app. When you pay, you select your bank and it will redirect you to a page that the bank provides. My bank provides a QR-code I can scan with their banking app, but it also offers a log in form to pay.
So I guess it is based on what your bank is willing to provide.
This is based on my experience with 'iDeal' the predecessor of wero.
Is Wero OpenSource ? Between me & you, I really hope GNU-Taler gets mass adoption they are on version 1.3 I think
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Love to see it.
Anything that diminishes Visa and MC's power is probably a good thing.
I read that there also are lots of concerns regarding privacy of data. It apparently collects lots of your data and interactions and shares it with third parties for publicity and so. And they're not transparent at all on this point.
What's the point of having a European app if it behaves worst than GAFAM?
Anyway, I don't know how much is rumour, how much is true. Does anybody have more information?
If it's onshore then it would be possible to regulate. If it's overseas then I imagine it would be harder to regulate without kicking visa and MC out of the EU and then we would need to start over anyway.
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We've had this in Australia since the 90s at least. All debit cards are dual network: They support both Visa/Mastercard, as well as the local network (called EFTPOS). EFTPOS is noticeably cheaper to process - around 0.3% fee, compared to ~1% for Visa/Mastercard debit in Australia, ~1.5% for credit, and ~3% for Visa/Mastercard in the USA. The profits stay in Australia rather than going to a US company.
That's only for debit cards, though. EFTPOS doesn't support credit cards.
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Finally someone is doing something about this. I worked in finans and people wouldn't believe the amount of money that goes to America because we use EMV and whatever the payment transaction system was called.
For those who were a little concerned about the "breakup" phrasing in the title, I didn't see any indication in the article indicating those payment methods would stop being accepted. Just moving away from being reliant on them.
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