Privacy

It has been happening for a long time now. Say something the government doesn't like and suddenly your bank and credit cards stop working.

This is done through a perverse private/public partnership where the US government will give a vague instruction to deplatform an individual or group and a private company will voluntarily enact this de facto ban.

The government then gets to claim they are not banning anyone and the private company can say they reserve the right not to do business with anyone.

Hell it used to be common to not even allow women or blacks access to banking.

https://kindredfutures.org/trapped-by-design-background/

Class action lawsuit. Their terms and conditions when I opened my accounts did not mention this and further, updating those terms and conditions and then closing my accounts is not justifiable. Since I'm likely not the only one they will do this to, it sounds to me like they need to learn a lesson.

My online campaign to point out every time one of their executives has said anything sus would be legendary.

Good thing I deleted PayPal as soon as I heard of this. They can't do shit to me.

Visa is already censoring the world's porn. As if we needed more reason to hate them.

For the USA and the rest of the world, Brazil has its own payment system as far as I know, and Europe is making one already, so jokes on you. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Asia has a very unique financial system in this sense. They are not reliant on 3rd party payment processors that can be counted on one hand, and they usually support P2P payment between banks. They also usually prefer to use QR than NFC (like on wechat, line, and kakao). This is one example standard that I found from Indonesia called QRIS, and they are expanding it wherever they can. Of course Visa is upset about those lol (see the section about US Government response)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QRIS

Pretty sure having a bank account is like an EU right, so banks can't just close your account willy-nilly over some online post.

Remember that there exist alternatives to the big three US payment processors.

China's UnionPay is pretty much global now, one can open a bank account remotely in Hong Kong or Singapore and go through UnionPay.

Russia's Mir is the answer to the current geopolitical situation and the country being cut off from SWIFT, they are backed by UnionPay and are accepted all over Asia, Africa and increasingly in Latin America, many local banks in these parts will give you a card with Mir if you request it.

India's UPI is also gaining traction in the subcontinent, in Europe Wero is rolling out as an answer to US dependency.

You don't have to be a prisoner to the three American processors, even in the US and Canada, UnionPay is gaining traction as a result of the demand from the Chinese diaspora and business owners.

Competition is good for business.

Edit : typo car -> card

Link to article?

It is about time for Wero and Digital Euro do get fully implemented across the EU. Until then, there are at least IBAN bank transfer that can secure a minimum viability of financial needs. That is at least for the EU, Brazil, India, China etc have alternatives in place already anyway.

Without having watched the video, but having an idea of what it's about given seeing a few places and creators I follow being sanctioned because the payment processors getting butthurt, I think it's worth mentioning crypto and direct competitors to the Visa and Mastercard mono(duo?)poly.

On crypto, if issue is that it burns too much energy, afaik generally new technologies are like that, improvements to consumption happening over time.

And about direct competitors, Russia made one from what I read, Brazil has Elo, and I think the EU was introducing their own recently. All 3 countries/country-like territories with their own problems, but I think it's a worth idea to copy and improve upon.

Also fomenting use of physical cash is a good idea too, me thinks.

Almost like controlling the finance sector gives you an outsized control over the way a modern economy functions due to the fusion of industrial and banking capital into finance capital. Lenin wrote about this over 100 years ago.

Extend this thought to the rest of the finance sector - retail and investment banks control the flow of loans to businesses, investing only in firms and ideas that they believe will generate profit, while also being able to deny people access to funds at their own discretion.

That’s why we Germans love cash. By the way, all it takes is for the government to face a crisis... Just look at China and its real estate crisis. Many people don’t use cash anymore, and they ran into problems when they couldn’t make digital payments or withdraw money, etc.

Time for more monero

This is why I liked the idea of Bitcoin in the beginning. (Before it became what it is now).

I still like Monero. It would make shit like this impossible to touch by authoritarian idiots.

I know this is off topic but the cc companies are going crazy from a state law that passed saying how oh it will be so bad because they just won't be able to handle it at all and will have to pull out or something. eff em.