Yeah, a "Freedom Card". Our money, they move it, no moralizing. We don't need crypto to fix this, just common sense legislation.
No company or individual should be denied the right to receive funds digitally without due process.
Companies should be free to transact with or exclude anyone, but there should be neutral infrastructure that facilitates the flow of money, with multiple players each with differing rules and risk profiles setup to help people and companies access it.
No one financial institution should be able to dictate the speech allowed on a platform.
You think that common sense legislation is a more realistic solution than crypto?
You can never rely on governments or corporations to have reasonable policies. Any payment system that is centrally controlled will inevitably be corrupted.
That's really at this point that's back to where I am with crypto. Through all the speculation and cruft, there is still a shot at owning our own payments, or rather no one owning them.
The payment networks have power, and if you can twist the arm of the gatekeepers, people subvert that power.
The only thing I don't know about these days is with the stablecoins, how do you avoid the government sinking their claws into you if you intrinsically (esp. if successful) have to hold that much in cash or short-term instruments? Or you have something like tether, which leaving aside anything else, you can definitely say is comically opaque for an entity that is nominally running $160B.
The problem that seems to be being missed here is that while fraud is one reason Visa has say over what they accept, the much much much bigger issue is ATF, Money laundering and Sanctions.
Cards like the Freedom card will never fly with either the Networks or the Issuing Banks as these kinds of payment instruments are immediately used to wash illicit funds.
Visa's stance with Steam is bollocks, and it is another example of the monopoly they hold over payment processing. They shouldn't have the ability to impact a legit merchants catalogue.
But the idea that we can have a Freedom card also doesn't checkout. The less known about what the money is spent on the higher the risk. And cost of complying with Suspicious Activity Reports regulations is really high (as the costs of you breach the requirements), so any attempts to create / run this kind of thing often don't stack up.
I think you underestimate just how much governments like the ability to control financial transactions within their borders, and in some cases (cough US) outside of it
No company or individual should be denied the right to receive funds digitally without due process.
Companies should be free to transact with or exclude anyone, but there should be neutral infrastructure that facilitates the flow of money, with multiple players each with differing rules and risk profiles setup to help people and companies access it.
No one financial institution should be able to dictate the speech allowed on a platform.
What's the status of FedNow?