Speaking on The Pat Kenny Show, Lagarde underscored Europe’s dependence on foreign digital payment infrastructure. “Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and Alipay are all controlled by American or Chinese companies,” she noted, arguing, “We should make sure there is a European offer.”
Would be spectacular if they make an alternative that does not rely on commercial banks so that having a for-profit bank account isn’t required to be able to pay for things electronically. Just like you don’t need that with cash. This is something central banks can provide to the citizens of their country. If commercial banks want people’s money, they better give an incentive. Currently they get it just so people can access the electronic payment systems.
But if course that’s unlikely because commercial banks won’t just let themselves be cut out of the sweet deal they got now.
agreed, this is really low hanging fruit for fixing society in general- services (banking but also insurance (remember Obama’s failed public option)) that everyone needs but are privately run should have competition run by the government that is publicly funded and run with the goal of break-even instead of for profit.
Let the for profit ones try to find reasons to exist then!
Other candidates for a public option: ISPs, ride-sharing services, credit rating agencies, etc etc
At least most European banks are happy to cut out the American middlemen (Visa and Mastercard) since they’re eating part of the cost, and we already have the infrastructure in place and working, it’s called “instant SEPA bank transfer”, most newer accounts offer it for free. The problem is the lack of political will to accelerate that indipendence and to stop hemorraging money (roughly 0.5% per transaction!)
Then as people learn to use it they’ll hopefully also stop using Paypal (another American company) when sending money to someone, or getting tracked in general every single time they use their debit card.
There’s also credit unions.
Knowing your nationality, some Canadian provinces do have a public bank too, like ATB in Alberta.
Yeah, I’m using Meridian in Ontario. While credit unions in Ontario are regulated as nonprofits, I’d still say it’s probably better if Bank of Canada provided a public chequing account and payment processing since it’ll still lower the base cost of participating in the payment system for everyone.
Digital euro is the solution