[pifm_guy]

It's the chicken and egg problem... If you started a new card provider today, you'd need to get consumers onboard, banks onboard, merchants onboard, and every card machine in the world replaced to accept your new card type.

The closest we get to that is loyalty cards and gift cards that only work in one shop. Some of those have managed to be compatible with a few shops, but nowhere near what would be needed for a consumer to consider it a replacement for visa.

[01acheru]

I totally understand you and you are perfectly right IMHO. This is why I don't understand why isn't there a payment standard, we are in 2023 already, the economic burden of keeping fattening those "old-school" card networks is absurd, it is billions and billions of dollars each year.

Lobbying is the only reason I see that keeps a payment standard from being implemented.

[carlosjobim]

There is no standard because there are different currencies in different empires and different rulers of those empires. Asking why there isn't a unified standard is the same as asking why there isn't a one world government.

The economic burden of the "old-school" payment networks Visa and Mastercard is very low for both merchants and customers for what these networks provide. The economic burden and other burdens of a one world government would be immense in comparison.

Please remember that most people use other methods to transact larger amounts, so the fees are mostly for the convenience of small remote transactions.

[Aeolun]

Would you want to work on a payment standard and then try to convince the rest of the world to use it?

I dunno, that just sounds too soul destroying to me.

[account42]

If the EU were interested in doing something about this they wouldn't have that problem at all - they could simply mandate interopability.

[neodypsis]

What you're describing is called "network effect": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect#Credit_cards