Comment by hopelite

I’ve always wondered how that is even really possible, especially today … ignoring the likely bribery, aka lobbying. For example, in Germany there is something called an EC patent network (there are others in different European countries), they process what are effectively debit card payments like would be done on the visa network. I do not see a reason other than corruption and maybe lack of an initiative, for all of Europe to e.g., put all of Visa, MC, Amex, etc out of business by having a universally payment processing network standard for all payment types. It is effectively nothing different than the BPE and Mint making currency, why could the government not have a universal payment processing system for all transactions in America?