[jallmann]

> MasterCard and Visa have no business unilaterally, secretly, and unaccountably policing their idiosyncratic idea of moral righteousness

That's not why they do it. The reasons are regulatory compliance and risk. Processors would be in big trouble if they facilitate payments when they shouldn't, or broke due to rampant fraud in certain sectors.

I get that you might not like it, but take it up with the US government. The processors would be happy to move as much money as possible to make as much money as possible.

[TheNewsIsHere]

Something that people don’t understand, which your comment sort of indirectly alludes to, is that Visa and MasterCard started as and for most of their existence were essentially a shared services center for financial institutions that wanted to participate in a common payment network.

The legal structure has changed, but the boards of both are still primarily comprised of executives from other major financial services institutions.

Risk averse and sensitive to regulatory pressure by nature, the issue isn’t with Visa and MasterCard directly. They’re just operating in a space.

[jallmann]

Yes! The book "One From Many" from Dee Hock, the Visa founder, discusses this formation in depth. For a long time, Visa's governance structure was quite unusual due to it being a consortium of stakeholders, some with very different interests.

Somewhat ironically, Hock's "chaordic" management philosophy has strong parallels with ethos of decentralization held by some crypto idealists.