It’s 2025. Why are we still using cards for regular purchases? In Europe there are so many local alternative systems, which are about to start integrating with each other.
Only because there’s not been any significant interest to change that. There are alternative already, American Express (which only issues cards for its own bank currently, but do have market share outside the USA), and Discover in the States. They both operate both sides of the system (issuing cards/credits and managing the underlying transaction network) whereas Visa and Mastercard only operate the network.
Visa and MasterCard are by far the largest, but there’s no reason that alternatives can’t succeed (even though it is unlikely).
I have never seen a bank card that doesn’t use Visa or Mastercard, even if we wanted to, it would be almost impossible to use an alternative.
It’s 2025. Why are we still using cards for regular purchases? In Europe there are so many local alternative systems, which are about to start integrating with each other.
Only because there’s not been any significant interest to change that. There are alternative already, American Express (which only issues cards for its own bank currently, but do have market share outside the USA), and Discover in the States. They both operate both sides of the system (issuing cards/credits and managing the underlying transaction network) whereas Visa and Mastercard only operate the network.
Visa and MasterCard are by far the largest, but there’s no reason that alternatives can’t succeed (even though it is unlikely).
Why does it have to be a bank card?