1503
Mastercard and Visa face backlash after hundreds of adult games removed from online stores Steam and Itch.io
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2025
1503 points (99.7% liked)
Technology
73573 readers
3228 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What are the alternatives to Visa/Mastercard?
Discover, American Express, Diner’s Club, and the one that still rules them all, Cash. There are probably others, but Visa and Mastercard are the two largest.
Diners Club is Discover, and they got bought up by Capital One a couple months ago. So you'll only really have Amex left.
Amex is expensive as fuck for shop owners. I'd boycott them too.
It's more visa and MasterCard are cheaper by abusing their duopoly and connections. While amex is the normal costs.
What's wrong with Capital One? I feel like Discover/Capital One / Diner's Club network is a good thing for Discover customers.
What benefits would Discover customers get from Capital One's acquisition? Discover acceptance in the US has been almost on-par with Visa/MC for many many years.
Remember that Discover is self-banked (unlike Visa/Mastercard that banks sign up with). This means that every credit line needs to be backed by... well ... A bank.
Bigger banks mean more credit opportunities, better interest rates (etc. etc). Deeper credit lines.
Diners club hasn't been available to normal people and small businesses for years now. It's basically a large business company card only thing nowadays.
How do I transfer my cash to online stores?
You can in Japan apparently. They have a system where you can go to convenience store and pay by scanning a code
You can also sorta use zelle, but the technical integration is not great. It's a very manual process as it is
Ultimately, the problem is we let two companies dominate commerce itself. We just need to let the governmet do payment processing, and require compatibility
Japan also accepts bank transfer for online payments. So you don't even need to leave your house.
Interac if you're Canadian, and if the store accepts e-transfers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interac
How hard can you throw?
Amex gift cards. Cashapp uses Block(Square) for their payment processing, which is easier to use because you can transfer funds to that from your bank.
Visa and MasterCard really are the only two you see in Europe
There are a lot of places going cashless these days. Heck some of my kids friend went to target and couldn't buy anything because target didn't have the staff to run anything but the self checkout, which at this place didn't accept cash. They had to leave empty-handed.
Discover and Diners Club merged a few years ago btw. Discover also has an alliance with JCB.
So Discover network is actually really, really big.
In Canada, I'd like to see Interac develop into one. Hopefully more prominence wouldn't ruin it
Edit:
Never mind. It would be inevitable.
In Italy, there's a debit card circuit called PagoBancomat.
Italy also has a digital-only payment system called Satispay. Denmark and Finland have MobilePay (which is way better than Satispay). Sweden has Swish.
Your country may have something similar, look it up. And then you can always pay with PayPal by connecting your bank account directly, with no cards involved (at least in Europe).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnionPay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_(payment_system)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JCB_(credit_card_company)
Didn't know that, thanks
At the cost of a less stable value, you can convert your currency to BTC, store it on a physical wallet like those made by Ledger and self-host BTCPay Server to make receiving money easier (alt cryptocurrency available via integrations). As for spending, that depends entirely on the recipient cooperating and accepting BTC. There are also 'payment gateways' that should help, including self-hosting a verifiable debit card. I'm still looking into it.
No thanks. It's not for me.
How is an even more niche process that involves having to go to an exchange to buy crypto then safe guard it and it being a taxable event when buying goods with it in some countries a solution?
People are wanting a mainstream alternative that the companies that they buy from use, and if the companies don't care to use it then it doesn't matter for the average person.
Even people actually into crypto are less interested in spending it because it exposes their balance if they aren't using coin mixers or monero which can make them a target. Not to mention most just see it as stock they hope goes to the moon as opposed to going through the cumbersome process of buying for the purpose of spending it like a depreciating asset.
Unfortunately crypto is already complicated as is. And as the other user said bitcoin isn't the best choice. Monero would be as close to the overall goal as it is possible.
Now using monero would be more anonymous than credit/debit cards making it a better option - but not many vendors support it, and cash is just simpler than any other option.
I want to buy a game online. How do I use cash?
Go to your local store and buy a Steam gift card.
Whoah whoah whoah! They need to keep that cash in a wallet, don't wave it around, look out for pickpockets, don't carry too much, and a slew of other common sense things that I won't list now but will mock you for not doing later.