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   Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Sunday, 17-Nov-2024 00:44:39 JST Charlie Stross

   @blackcoat Are you American or something? Because I'm in the UK and I got my first debit card in the mid-1980s.

   • Embed this notice
     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Sunday, 17-Nov-2024 08:12:54 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • Tim Panton

     @steely_glint @blackcoat Again, you're an American: here in the UK, Visa and MC were franchise operations and the card issuers were the high street banks who operated the settlement networks. Different infrastructure.

   • Embed this notice
     Tim Panton (steely_glint@chaos.social)'s status on Sunday, 17-Nov-2024 08:12:56 JST Tim Panton

     in reply to

     @cstross @blackcoat
     But the Visa/MC duopoly wouldn't lower the transaction cost to a point where micro payments would work, so there were all these micropayment wallets that intermediated - and no one used.

     Arguably the telcos were in the best place to fix this, but they were still obsessed by billing for minutes and gouging for data.