News and information from Europe πͺπΊ
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I hate that there is not much societal change going on other then moving business around and rebranding.
It's at least a start. We cannot expect our governments to do more, the rest is on society at large. A good start for more change would be the expulsion of any US nationals from EU countries.
We can imagine the end of the world. We can imagine the collapse of society, but we can no longer imagine the end of capitalism.
If you wonder why all the bureaucrats suddenly turned anti-globalist (while 20 years ago it wasn't so), that's because they saw how powerful a domestic centralized system makes their kind.
And 20 years ago it wasn't so, because they really had to kill all sprouts of such domestic systems.
It's the old Chinese\Roman\whatever game, where bureaucrats and troops were, for different events, moved further from their home provinces and old assignments or closer. Only what's happening is the opposite of the best course of action in that game, we have a weak emperor, no emperor in fact.
So - 20 years ago choosing American companies made European bureaucrats more powerful. Now they are powerful enough to prefer domestic suppliers of all these services, now they can control those new suppliers and become even more powerful.
The world is always in change.
Finally!
Yes please
GNU-Taler is ready
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.
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.
Let's not forget, they Almost forced Onlyfans to shut down because they were going to cut them off from their payment system.
California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii would also like to request EU status and new non facist payment methods
The Cali data companies will be in for a shock when they suddenly have to comply with any regulation, let alone the GDPR
You forgot New Jersey.
Does using Google wallet give any fee to Google?
No but I stopped using apple/Google pay to stop giving them data. It's a choose your poison though they stop the stores from collecting data as your card keeps changing.
They don't get paid directly, just with your data.
I hope Canada and Mexico can join. It's time to start bankrupting murican companies.
Would be spectacular if they make an alternative that does not rely on commercial banks so that having a for-profit bank account isn't required to be able to pay for things electronically. Just like you don't need that with cash. This is something central banks can provide to the citizens of their country. If commercial banks want people's money, they better give an incentive. Currently they get it just so people can access the electronic payment systems.
But if course that's unlikely because commercial banks won't just let themselves be cut out of the sweet deal they got now.
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.
Same thing in France with CB. Iβve only recently understood why I was asked to choose between "CB" and "Visa" when paying by card online, when both were written on my card. Actually, when I got my first card as a teenager, I was a bit nervous about that, I was scared of βmaking the wrong choiceβ when paying online; I rememberd asking adults around me what that was about and how to choose which one to select, and not one of them could give me an explanation, they told me that there was no difference and that I should just pick one at random. Now I feel kinda bad about all the times that I chose Visa, because from what I understand their fees are generally higher for the seller.
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.
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.
That's the state of literally everything in Europe.
Hey now, we were able to standardize the curvature of cucumbers.
Standardise*
European spelling is superior to US spelling!