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Re:MasterCard's Simplify Commerce by dsaber on Thursday June 27, 2013 @08:11PM (#5955496)
> Visa, MasterCard, and co. have rules that effectively prevent you from using the same backends in different areas.

What's the reasoning behind that restriction? Could you just re-use your backend stack, but use a different data center / machines, that's isolated from the backend of other countries?

Re:MasterCard's Simplify Commerce by pc on Thursday June 27, 2013 @08:20PM (#5955528)
It's because the banks that issue credit cards have most of the negotiating leverage, and they don't want giant US banks competing on their territory on the payment acceptance side. As a result, you need to use a European bank to accept payments in Europe, a Latin American bank in Latin America, and so on. The payments industry is full of these non-obvious (and unfortunate...) power dynamics.