Wed probably be in a similar place, but the advantage of a private entity being that it can bridge the already existing digital payments, so if a store big enough like steam had the option to, they could integrate with that country’s digital payments directly.
True to some degree if you’re an American, but this is Visa setting internal policy for American politics, and that reflecting globally.
Not every country has the same laws or politics that the US does.
The reason there’s so few is because people don’t want to have to figure out beforehand whether or not they can use the payment provider they have at the store they want to go to.
I’ve seen this happen multiple times especially in Japan when the barcode payment craze started. There were like 13 competing payment providers and now there are 2. Because people don’t want to have to carry around 13 different types of card or payment typed and have 13 different types of payments. They want one that works everywhere.
It’s why there needs to be sovereign digital payment systems that are legally enforced.
Visa continues to set the world’s content moderation policies extra-judicially.
Go figure having all electronic payments be through private companies would have eventual consequences.
Again, the issue is this is an American company setting American content policy internationally.
Storefronts and brands can set up local branches and sell through those using the local digital payment provider without getting in trouble with their headquarter’d country. They can’t do that with a private entity that’s decided to set their global content policy to align with America’s.