Comment by Aspos
14 hours ago
Each of those networks carry a lot, a lot of ancient stuff. Gov is better off building a brand new network from scratch and promote it as a standard for banks to join.
There are plenty of great examples from this century all over the world.
Even Iran has a better payment infra than the US.
> Even Iran has a better payment infra than the US.
That is a big claim. What would prevent someone from setting up something equally as good in the US, aside from the network effect and users unwilling to try something new for uncertain gain?
End-users don't have much agency here, network needs banks.
In Iran, they simply don't have much choice, so banks use the only network available to them. It just happens to have been built in this century, so it's not as archaic as Visa.
Here in the US, I guess only regulators could realistically create a new network and have enough power to convince banks to adopt it.
Nothing, of course, stops anyone from creating a new network. But the network effect is THE driving force here, it's not a minor factor.