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Re:Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024) by srivmo on Friday July 25, 2025 @02:49AM (#44680331)
The article underplays the role stablecoins are going to play in the next 10 years. Compared to 6+ intermediaries in a standard SWIFT payment, a cross-border payment facilitated by USDC/USDT just needs 2 players - an on-ramp provider and an off-ramp provider. The result ⇒ insanely low costs, much lesser than 1-5% typically charged by a SWIFT payment.

This network is sustainable and running on established blockchains which have been running for over a decade now - ETH.

This network somehow needs to penetrate domestically too - something like a UPI. That moment is going to be a watershed moment that should break this duopoly.

PS: Its a separate matter altogether that Visa/Mastercard are trying to gel well into this new age infrastructure

Re:Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024) by dotwaffle on Friday July 25, 2025 @03:28AM (#44680555)
> Compared to 6+ intermediaries in a standard SWIFT payment

Huh? I think the message format in ISO20022 can only 3 intermediaries before having to resort to more complex mechanisms. Most SWIFT payments have 0 or 1 intermediaries.

Re:Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024) by elric on Friday July 25, 2025 @03:38AM (#44680628)
Not sure what OP is referring to either.

I guess you could consider SWIFT to be an intermediary instead of a delivery mechanism? But even that doesn't add up to 6+.