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Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
251–260 of 621 posts
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#252I'm glad the Mastercard-Visa duopoly is finally getting some attention, these companies shouldn't be allowed to exercise the financial control they do. Payment infrastructure is not a free market - you can't just choose to pay via some other processor if they turn you down, they ARE the processors. Therefore, they should be under intense scrutiny when they refuse.
This is the kind of problem that Bitcoin was designed to solve.
Isn't Bitcoin impractical for these sorts of transactions (slow, high fees, no privacy, etc)? People always say Bitcoin was designed to solve this sort of thing but whenever I've looked into it it's been fairly impractical for use in most day-to-day transactions.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#253I'm glad the Mastercard-Visa duopoly is finally getting some attention, these companies shouldn't be allowed to exercise the financial control they do. Payment infrastructure is not a free market - you can't just choose to pay via some other processor if they turn you down, they ARE the processors. Therefore, they should be under intense scrutiny when they refuse.
There's no meaningful attention, here. Until it is on the US Gov't radar, this 'attention' is just a collection of upset redditors furiously posting forum messages which will fissile out in a few months, at most. Besides, it's not like you can boycott Mastercard or VISA.
You can, if you switch to using American Express and Discover cards. They’re both closed networks that only take their particular card.
It’s almost trading one for another but it would be an effective way to boycott these companies
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no meaningful attention, here. Until it is on the US Gov't radar, this 'attention' is just a collection of upset redditors furiously posting forum messages which will fissile out in a few months, at most. Besides, it's not like you can boycott Mastercard or VISA.
Germany actually uses their own card system .. or cash. They are very much against visa/mastercard due to their “high commission fees” and “privacy concerns” Girocard charges a 0,3% fee vs visa/mastercard 3% See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girocard
>Girocard charges a 0,3% fee vs visa/mastercard 3%
AFAIK all credit cards in the EU have similarly low interchange rates because of EU regulation.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#255I'm glad the Mastercard-Visa duopoly is finally getting some attention, these companies shouldn't be allowed to exercise the financial control they do. Payment infrastructure is not a free market - you can't just choose to pay via some other processor if they turn you down, they ARE the processors. Therefore, they should be under intense scrutiny when they refuse.
I think the mint should maintain a payment processor, and the post office should maintain an official email address for everyone. these are basic things we need to exist in society, we should not be at the whims of private organizations.
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Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the mint should maintain a payment processor, and the post office should maintain an official email address for everyone. these are basic things we need to exist in society, we should not be at the whims of private organizations.
Is a payment processor operated by the Federal Reserve good enough? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow Well, it probably would be, except guess who killed it in favor of a crypto scheme? https://www.jitumaster.com/2025/06/us-president-signs-execut... I agree about the PO though. Social media shouldn't be a for-profit enterprise either.
Ugh, they killed FedNow too? That hadn’t hit my radar. Why a waste.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#257I'm glad the Mastercard-Visa duopoly is finally getting some attention, these companies shouldn't be allowed to exercise the financial control they do. Payment infrastructure is not a free market - you can't just choose to pay via some other processor if they turn you down, they ARE the processors. Therefore, they should be under intense scrutiny when they refuse.
I think the mint should maintain a payment processor, and the post office should maintain an official email address for everyone. these are basic things we need to exist in society, we should not be at the whims of private organizations.
Wouldn't it be better to try to regulate the necessity of needing these services out of existence?
For the sake of reducing complexity in an already very complex world, I'd rather that it be illegal to require an email address to sign up for an account (or, alternatively, make it illegal to require an account for things like making a reservation at a restaurant) then being provided with an email by the USPS.
Doubly so given the interactions that I've had with digital services provided by my country's government and the bad (and in several cases extremely bad) experiences that I've had with them.
To be clear - I don't object to e.g. an address from the USPS complementing my existing email - I just don't want to be forced to use it for anything due to it being given some special properties that normal email providers aren't.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no meaningful attention, here. Until it is on the US Gov't radar, this 'attention' is just a collection of upset redditors furiously posting forum messages which will fissile out in a few months, at most. Besides, it's not like you can boycott Mastercard or VISA.
> Besides, it's not like you can boycott Mastercard or VISA. Why not? Lots of people, especially in lower income brackets, don't have ANY credit cards at all. I know many. They buy groceries and gas with cash and pay their utilities by ACH or mailing a check. Everything else they need, they buy locally. What you mean to say is that it's _inconvenient_ for you personally to boycott Visa/Mastercard. Which may be true e…
Visa and Mastercard run debit networks for majority of banks and credit unions. They get fees there as well.
Even lower income citizens use debit cards more than cash nowadays.
You would need to use different networks like Discover and American Express to effectively boycott them
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no meaningful attention, here. Until it is on the US Gov't radar, this 'attention' is just a collection of upset redditors furiously posting forum messages which will fissile out in a few months, at most. Besides, it's not like you can boycott Mastercard or VISA.
Germany actually uses their own card system .. or cash. They are very much against visa/mastercard due to their “high commission fees” and “privacy concerns” Girocard charges a 0,3% fee vs visa/mastercard 3% See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girocard
So does Russia, Denmark, Belgium/Netherlands, Iran, China. I’m sure there’re others. I know someone working on unified payment platform for games in Africa. They have dozens of different payment systems instead of the two.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#260I wonder if Valve could (threaten to) become their own payment processor if this becomes too big of a threat. They are one of the few companies on earth with enough money to attempt it. If I remember correctly a big part of Valves heavy investment into linux was Microsoft wanting to lock windows down more, and now in 2025 gaming on linux is a viable alternative to windows.
Well, you can buy Steam gift cards for cash in underdeveloped markets like Germany. Can’t imagine how else would it work.