this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
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'March to independence': Christine Lagarde wants EU to ditch Visa, Mastercard for own platform (www.businesstoday.in)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by zaxvenz@lemm.ee to c/europe@feddit.org
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[โ€“] turnip@lemm.ee 3 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

This is a CBDC that she wants, something they have been talking about for years. Likely they want this because many European countries wont be able to survive higher interest rates caused by aging demographics, as the US high interest rates suck up global liquidity making rolling over debt more expensive.

They will be able to slow inflation using the programmability of the money to prevent you from surpassing your allotted climate credits, as they are already forcing companies to measure their c02 usage in a system called the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). They will also be able to increase inflation via issuing expiring stimulus, which would allow them to issue stimulus without worrying about the 18 month lag.

What Europe also wanted was a global climate change system, where they collect tax revenue from carbon credits, which would be charged to foreign emitters. Trump recently front run this with his own tariff system, following project 2025's idea of eliminating all international tariffs. Though countries like Canada are talking about joining Europes climate plan instead, I think all countries will have to decide where to hand the keys to their domestic economic policy.

https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/eu-emissions-trading-system-eu-ets/ets2-buildings-road-transport-and-additional-sectors_en

[โ€“] MITM0@lemmy.world 12 points 8 hours ago

GNU-Taler is ready

[โ€“] TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip 15 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Does using Google wallet give any fee to Google?

[โ€“] normalexit@lemmy.world 40 points 16 hours ago

They don't get paid directly, just with your data.

[โ€“] stormdahl@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

Are there any companies working on something like that?

[โ€“] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 51 points 22 hours ago (6 children)

I would like this. I enjoy playing hentai games, but MasterVisa bans or alters the games by denying their services to creators and stores alike. This is an affront to free speech.

[โ€“] Hupf@feddit.org 8 points 9 hours ago (1 children)
[โ€“] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

??? relevance to parent comment?

[โ€“] IEatDaGoat@lemm.ee 2 points 5 hours ago

Overruled.

[โ€“] Alpha71@lemmy.world 24 points 16 hours ago

Let's not forget, they Almost forced Onlyfans to shut down because they were going to cut them off from their payment system.

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[โ€“] Formfiller@lemmy.world 43 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii would also like to request EU status and new non facist payment methods

[โ€“] CMonster@discuss.online 3 points 5 hours ago

You forgot New Jersey.

[โ€“] jenesaisquoi@feddit.org 23 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

The Cali data companies will be in for a shock when they suddenly have to comply with any regulation, let alone the GDPR

[โ€“] stiephelando@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

They got CCPA

[โ€“] jenesaisquoi@feddit.org 5 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

What I imagine that to contain:

  1. USA! USA! USA!

  2. Communism bad!

  3. See 1 and 2

[โ€“] MITM0@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Aren't EU technically a Social Democracy ?

[โ€“] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

The EU is not a country.

Some countries in the EU currently have or have had Social Democratic governments, but mainly they have governments which are Neoliberal, though a milder form than the US: generally the mainstream Rightwing around this parts has policies which are to the left of the Democrat Party in the US, though not by much, so for example nobody has a Healthcare system which is as bad as the US - even the ones with a Health Insurance based system have way more rules and consumer protections around it - and even in the worst countries Public Transport is better than in the in US.

Then again at least one country in the EU - Hungary - currently has Fascism whilst the other ones which are said to have Far-Right governments (such as Italy) politically sit between the US Democrats and Republicans.

In the things which are the responsibility of the EU (i.e. trade-related subjects), the EU is significantly more pro-consumer than the US, with for example the precautionary principle - i.e. proven safe before allowed, rather than the US' method of allowing until proven unsafe - being used for chemical substances which people tend to come in contact with, and more broadly with consumers having way more rights all across the EU than they have in the US (were it massively depends on the State) and with stricter rules when it comes to pollution and more broadly Environmental damage.

I supposed that in the things which fall under the responsibility of the EU, it tends to be sort of half-way between Neoliberal and Social-Democrat, for example it's very Neoliberal when it comes to Finance, but it's Social Democrat when it comes to consumer rights and protections, especially for things like food, though even there it's sort of somewhere between lax and strict in regulatory terms. I suspect this is due to different countries caring more about different domains and hence the politics of countries which care more about a specific domain getting more strongly imprinted in legislation at an EU level so it ends up reflected into very different political spins for different trade domains.

[โ€“] MITM0@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I didn't say EU was a country, who do you think I am ? An American ?

[โ€“] jenesaisquoi@feddit.org 2 points 6 hours ago

Then why did you ask what the current policies of 27 countries' governments were as if there were only one?

[โ€“] intheformbelow@lemmy.world 30 points 23 hours ago

I hope Canada and Mexico can join. It's time to start bankrupting murican companies.

[โ€“] bus_factor@lemmy.world 28 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Most card transactions in Norway go through a local system called BankAxept, and have for decades. A lot of Norwegians don't even know, because the same cards also support VISA, and they think that's what they're using.

[โ€“] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

I know that both Portugal and The Netherlands also have their own local systems, but you can't really use the system of one country in another country.

The only country in Europe which I know for sure doesn't have its own local payments system is the UK, though it would not surprise me if there are others.

What's really needed is some sort of pan-european payments system, ideally one which also gets accepted in the rest of the World. The closest we have to it at the moment in the EU is that you can do normal (so called SEPA, if I remember it correctly) bank transfers to any account at any bank in the EU, all for the same cost (generally free) independently of it being in the same country or across borders, and quite a number of retailers all over Europe do accept payment via bank transfer, but that's not an actual payment system, it's a bank transfer system that you sometimes can use to pay an online order from a retailer.

As things stand now, if for example from my Portuguese bank account I want to buy something from an online store in Germany, the payment has to go via Visa (Mastercard isn't really common in Portugal)

[โ€“] barsoap@lemm.ee 14 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Same in Germany with the girocard system. Key feature is that there's no real intermediary, it's a standard the banking sector came up with to easily authorise ordinary bank transfers. Online shopping was never an issue in Germany push come to shove you just wire them the money.

And I have no fucking idea why the EPI is launching a whole phone-based system instead/before standardising debit card infrastructure. That app offers literally nothing that I can't already do with my card and bank app on my phone short of a wallet and why the hell would I want that I already have a giro account. And why would I want to send money to a telephone number instead of an IBAN. What kind of stuff are those people on that they think that's a feature.

But at least the general structure of the EPI is similar to how girocard came about: A consortium of banks, public, cooperative, private, coming up with interoperability standards. Germany has like 1400 banks (and that's after a lot of mergers), most of them only serving a district or larger town and surrounding villages for those there was never an alternative to working with each other and the over-regional banks jumped on to not be left out.

Sometimes, all you need is some marketing. E.g. it's been possible to print out a QR code with your account info so you can receive transactions at a flea market for ages (in lieu of having your phone display it and people scanning from there), and ever since SEPA instant payment it's basically cash, as far as the seller is concerned.

[โ€“] bus_factor@lemmy.world 22 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

My main takeaway from the comments on this post is that basically all of Europe solved this a long time ago at the domestic level, but that international interoperability is lacking.

[โ€“] AshLassay@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

No, not all of Europe solved this. The payment systems they made are for internet payments with instant confirmation. Many European nations are still on the Visa Debit or Debit Mastercard systems for card payments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maestro_(debit_card)

[โ€“] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

https://www.docs.pay.sibs.com/payment-methods/

Ideal, bizum, bancontact, cartes bancaires, Mbway are all euro based. I wonder why they are not interoperable.

[โ€“] jenesaisquoi@feddit.org 11 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

That's the state of literally everything in Europe.

[โ€“] bus_factor@lemmy.world 9 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Hey now, we were able to standardize the curvature of cucumbers.

[โ€“] jenesaisquoi@feddit.org 1 points 6 hours ago

Standardise*

European spelling is superior to US spelling!

[โ€“] Prime_Minister_Keyes@lemm.ee 6 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Maybe there was a more important need for it. ( อกยฐ อœส– อกยฐ)

[โ€“] bus_factor@lemmy.world 7 points 16 hours ago (4 children)

I get the phone based system. People remember their phone number and email address, they do not remember their bank account details. It's a lot easier to initiate the transfer in the moment if it's based on something the recipient can just tell you. QR codes are an acceptable workaround for a small vendor, but not really ideal for paying back the friend who paid for lunch.

Pretty much every country has something like that ready or in the works. Venmo is huge in the US, Vipps (which uses the aforementioned BankAxept in the backend) is emerging as the de-facto standard for small transfers in Norway.

It was a bigger deal in the US than elsewhere due to how hard it is to do bank transfers there, but the rest of the world is also very keen on the concept.

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