Comment on Valve are now removing a bunch of sex games from Steam to keep banks and card companies happy

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azertyfun@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

Virtually every payment processor uses VISA/MasterCard in the back-end. For EU users PayPal can be backed by SEPA mandates instead (direct bank pre-authorization), but otherwise VISA/MC is holding payment processors by the balls in virtually every other market. Without Visa/MC, there is no way to bring funds in or out of your account.

The only alternative is to negotiate interconnection with banks directly, but that’s a very high bar for broad adoption. It has happened on a small scale (e.g. Payconiq in the Benelux) and the EU is attempting to broaden that to the rest of the continent, but it’s a very tough sell because they have to convince every major bank to support the new standard.

This is a textbook case where capitalism isn’t the solution because there are only two market actors and a virtually insurmountable barrier to entry.

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