If there was political will, there is nothing stopping governments from capping the fees taken by Visa/MC.

American Express (and all the other schemes where the issuer is also the acquirer, i.e. Diners Club) aren’t capped.

The 0.3% cap however did kill Amex’s licensing model where they let other banks around Europe issue their cards, so they simply withdrew from those, as 0.3% is not enough to pay for the rewards.

Note that this is just interchange. Payment processors still charge merchants whatever they damn please.

Sure you feel one way. Other people feel another.

But it's also possible the correct answer doesn't depend on your feelings but on falsifiable theories.

Macroeconomic theory relies on a lot of spherical cows. In theory I don’t disagree with you, but in practice we don’t have the tools (yet) to do this type of economics in a scientific/falsifiable way.

You can't guarantee or even approximate a given input and output for a scenario like this.

But we also don't need to specify initial conditions exactly to do science.

I'm less convinced that the equations themselves are unknowable.

Politicians will screw up the implementation, businesses will engineer around it and the alternative solution might ultimately come out to be a better one in practice than in theory.

Trying to define economics by simple equations which you expect to define policy is a lost cause.

See e.g. Milton Friedman's comments about how flawed Hayek's economics are and how great Road to Serfdom is.

So my take on that speech is it's political rather than scientific.

In general I'm skeptical of arguments that something is unknowable unless they come with a rigorous proof or at least a well stated conjecture that has stood the test of time.

I get that this type of oversight is likely against some philosophical POV here but it's not like middlemen making money is an all-to-great and solitary goal a society should try to defend.

Ignoring the difficulty of avoiding lobbying money, yes, it'd be difficult. This is a large scale financial change and there are always, always loopholes that will come, not just from politicians who make those because of lobbying money. With how giant the economies are, and how often these cards are used, it isn't a simple move at all.

Look at credit card chip readers in the US. The amount of backend equipment change it took to get something "that simple" in action was a lot. I'm not defending them for it not being quicker, but a move like a duel card is absolutely difficult.

Europe made this jump well over a decade ago.

It isn't a backend equipment problem.

Dual cards are easy btw. I used to have a joint Amex MasterCard. Separate cards, but same account.

I'd wager that the banks didn't give a damn as long as fraud was cheaper than investing into a new, much securer system. France was the first country to introduce chips into debit cards and tha was in 1990[1]

[1] http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/history_of_cards/ind...

EMV is a thing, you know. And cards don't run out of battery or get smashed like phones.

Even as a tech guy, no thanks. Phones are mostly ok but still fuck up too frequently to trust them with anything serious.

At least in some jurisdictions I lived, debit card is as good as cash (well, not exactly the same but because handling cash has also its cost, most of retailers treat them equally)

The fact that it is a _cryto_ currency is merely anecdotal. Its an implementation detail. It makes people think this currency is actually distributed as most other crypto currencies, while in fact it's just a consortium of companies having total control over all aspects (issuance, destruction, etc.) of the currency.

> set up an interoperable network for banks and custodians to use

This is just plain wrong. It's not banks or custodians that use this currency, it's just end users and the consortium. Banks are heavily controlled and regulated. I _mainly_ trust governments and legal systems to take fair decisions or litigate properly monetary issues. There is nothing like that here. The consortium of companies owning the currency decide the amount they want to create, they decide who gets refund and why, etc. I have much more trust in a country and a judiciary system than a bunch of worldwide companies to handle my currency.

Don't forget the amount of support they will provide. Looking at major tech companies and their histories in providing customer support I see a rather bleak picture here.

This goes also for all those new fangled disruptive app banks. Guess how much success an N26 (new German app bank) customer had to contact support after 80'000 Euro went missing from his account. Spoiler: Until it was a massive story in the press, not much.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N26_(bank)#Controversy

Completely agree. It's a currency.

> It's not banks or custodians that use this currency, it's just end users and the consortium

I do not agree with this

> I have much more trust in a country and a judiciary system

compared to a protocol that can be monitored for the total amount of money it holds?

For small, everyday transactions this may be true but mainstream banks are much better for all the other stuff.

Serious banks have been doing that for literally hundreds of years.

That's very subjective.

I've had many many banks accross the world. Monzo is what everyone wished for.

I only ever use debit to pay off the balances of credit cards and to withdraw cash.

What debts? I clear the balances when I get the statements.

In the mean time you are in debt.

> Actually helps me to track my money better.

Have you used Monzo?

Why/how is that a bad thing?