Comment by WarmWash

I mildly investigated this as it is clear merchants want to get out from under the thumb of CC companies, so they would probably be a helpful ally.

However, starting up a credit card company from scratch is, extremely capital intensive, extremely bureaucratically heavy, and all the helpful finance players are in bed with or are the institutions you would be upending.

Merchants would probably help, but inevitably would take ownership and steer the ship into their harbor (not consumers). A system where merchants own the payment system would probably be even worse.