Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

they also provide tremendous value. however, looked at from a disruptive innovation perspective, i think two questions are critical:

+ where can startups take the edges off the market, without taking them on front-on? certain segments, use cases, etc.

+ what tech innovations exist today (or are on the horizon) which a startup could leverage faster/better than visa/mastercard to better serve certain use cases better than v/m (e.g Dell (when they were a startup) was so much faster than IBM to incorporate Intel's new tech every cycle, which resulted in Dell customers getting more capable and less expensive pcs)

Rupay in India seems to be doing it.

Non affiliated video about it: https://youtu.be/B_AY4a3_-GQ

This is something I hope a blockchain solution breaks through.

A thought on how to do it.

1. Create a stable coin

2. Create a credit card that uses this token

3. Tie using it to some reward, supercharge it with VC if you have to

4. Release a QR payment component where vendors don't have to pay to receive payment, get rewards and payees earn double rewards

5. Integrate that bad boy far and wide

Worth noting that Stripe, Shopify and Square are also well placed to use a similar strategy

Apple Pay is using NFC to supply credit card info, but it's still most commonly Visa or Mastercard.

Unless you mean the Apple Card, in which case it's a Mastercard.

> Merchants can pass the CC surcharge through

Can they? I was under the impression (unverified) that they are under contract to provide the same prices for CC customers as they do for cash or debit card.