Fair Access to Banking

https://usips.org/blog/2025/07/fair-access-to-banking/

by boastful_inaba • 12 months ago

48 24 12 months ago

The U.S. Internet Preservation Society writes about chokepoints in the financial processing system (inspired by recent events with games stores) and the several layers present that are not obvious to people outside the system.

UPIPS covers why payment networks are effectively immune from competition, and why creating a new competing payment network without restrictions will not provide benefits due to contract lock-in and other problems.

They also cover proposed legislation's benefits and weaknesses for addressing the problem.

bediger40002• 12 months ago

This situation (Visa and MasterCard determining what's acceptable or not commercially on the internet) is a side effect of having privatized electronic money. The US federal government runs the ACH system for free, and it works fine. The feds could have done electronic money, and it could have been more secure and less costly, But noooooo, we had to have a market based solution. The consequences include a few unelected CEOs making decisions about what's pornographic and what isn't, and it's safer to assume that the entire system is corrupted.

ethan_smith• 12 months ago

Government-run electronic payment systems would face enormous technical scaling challenges, security vulnerabilities, and implementation costs that likely exceed private systems when accounting for taxpayer burden and bureaucratic inefficiencies.

idle_zealot• 12 months ago

Oh, dang, really? I'll have to go inform every country that uses a government epay system that actually they should let MasterCard take over.

bediger40002• 12 months ago

Security vulnerabilities on the scale of the "carding" market? There's entire cybercrime sectors based on various forms of credit card fraud. Given the UK's "phantom withdrawal" situation 25-30 years ago, it wouldn't surprise me in the least to hear of a credit card issuing bank or two being entirely fraudulent.

fmobus• 12 months ago

Pix sends its regards.

It costs the Brazilian government around $10M yearly to maintain[1]. A bargain.

[1] https://www.infomoney.com.br/economia/custo-para-manter-pix-...

charcircuit• 12 months ago

These financial services have way too big of a power imbalance over customers, businesses, and this gives them influence over the entire economy. It is extremely unfair and there isn't an easy alternative. While crypto exists, one can't simply ignore the trillions upon trillion of dollars flowing through these traditional means.

Businesses being cut off from the prominent financial system of society is very stressful, damaging, and really shouldn't be a thing if they are not breaking any laws of where they are operating.

burnt-resistor2• 12 months ago

Consortia of credit unions and national postal services all need to offer universal p2p and electronic payment methods that do not depend on the patronage of fickle, moralizing corporate crooks. Banking and ability to make purchases and receive funds are human rights, not privileges to be dictated by technofeudal overlords.

ac29• 12 months ago

The ACH system is already a universal electronic payment system. Its run by the federal government and is close to free (the fed charges a fraction of a penny per transaction, most consumer bank accounts offer free ACH).

AlotOfReading2• 12 months ago

I'm surprised a system with multiple days of settlement time where you have to enter 23 digits without a typo and reversal requires a bunch of paperwork never caught on with consumers.

coolestguy• 12 months ago

That's exactly what ethereum is - you're able to move funds without permission, trustlessly, instantly.

AlotOfReading2• 12 months ago

A payment system people actually want to use is not just the system to move funds. It also needs ways to move funds back and meet the onerous compliance burdens anything financial eventually has to deal with and a thousand other little things at the boundary between the perfect little world of the system and the messy, complicated world of a modern economy.

techjamie• 12 months ago

Most people are not suited for using crypto in a serious capacity. Crypto puts the entire onus of keeping the funds secure on the holder, and one misstep on their part can see their entire wallet siphoned away in a fraction of a second with no recourse, and likely no punishment on the thief.

Banks have fraud experts on staff, they have people that can monitor activity and stop such transactions. Both sides have accountability so that the thief can be tracked down. Your worst outcome is getting your card skimmed and not noticing it in time to report the fraud unless you deliberately send your bank info to someone else. But even then, your bank can probably still help you.

burnt-resistor2• 12 months ago

No, it's not a complete solution and has too much shady speculation and sketchy exchanges. Furthermore, it's not a stablecoin.

F3nd0• 12 months ago

Here’s hoping GNU Taler will actually take off! Not really P2P, but should cut down on technofeudal overlords.

https://www.taler.net/

jongjong• 12 months ago

There needs to be a push for private moneys and more digital cryptocurrencies. Especially as wealth concentration and automation are pushing people out of jobs. People cannot be forced to use the same currency system and compete on a playing field which systematically values their labor as approaching $0. They must be allowed to form parallel economies which work for them.

Currently, it feels like it's illegal to be poor. You can't do anything without a license due to regulations. Not to mention the media conditioning you have to overcome to achieve the simple goal of living sustainably.

I'm becoming jealous of cavemen because a caveman did not have to convince his wife to live in a cave without tap water and electricity, it was a given. They just made the most of what they had knowing that there was no alternative. They would just hunt and wash their clothes in the river. The inconvenience came with some benefits of having lots of time to be out in nature, enjoying the sights and sounds, never knowing what they're going to encounter. Also, they didn't know about bacteria or parasites so they didn't have to worry about anything.

The most difficult part of being alive today is convincing your loved ones to cut on expenses. Even if you can have a comfortable life without all the consumable junk, it's impossible to convince most people that this is the case. Life is a constant struggle against media conditioning.

The media creates this narrative that you need to have a lot of things just to be alive. For some people, it's possible for them to have all these things without too much struggle but for others it's basically impossible for them to have... so these people have to spend a ton of their energy just fighting these media narratives because that's all they can do.

It's like being a salesman except your customers are your loved ones, your product is 'cutting expenses' and your biggest competitor, 'consumerism' has an unlimited advertising budget and its product is totally incompatible with your product... And your competitor runs its ads on repeat 24/7.

hooverd• 12 months ago

I don't think that's the case... People enjoy moving past subsistence farming.

martey• 12 months ago

It is important to note that the author of this article (and the founder of this organization) is also the owner of notorious harassment forum Kiwi Farms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms

x-complexity• 12 months ago

The parent comment is an ad hominem attack, plain & simple.

Nothing has been said by the parent about the message: Instead, the messenger is marked as the target in order to take down the message via association.

"Give me the man and I will give you the case against him"

------

About the legislation itself:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/401...

It's mainly 3 semi-related parts stapled together. If the person/business/bank is complying with the law:

- 1a) Banks with > $10 billion are blocked from (i) the Fed's discount window lending program, & (ii) the Automated Clearing House Network, if they refuse to do business with them,

- 1b) Banks are required to accept deposits from them & law-complying member banks,

- 1c) The board of directors of banks/credit unions have to notify the state/fed if said access blocking happens,

- 2) (Section 5) Payment networks can't refuse service to them, &

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/401...

- 3) Banks & payment networks have to give them access to financial services

The middle part (2) is what's being focused on in the article.

I'm mostly in agreement that (1) the penalty's too low, & (2) restricting dispense of the law to only the Comptroller renders it ineffective.

(1) is easily solvable with regards to editing the text alone: raise the limit to 50% & $100k respectively.

(2) is also solvable, by striking out "by the Comptroller of the Currency".

greyface-• 12 months ago

The message is an important one, and it deserves advocacy. I have advocated for this specific legislation myself in recent comments. But we've seen in the past what happens when this individual is given attention, and it is difficult to, in good conscience, assist him in attracting more of it.

stblack• 12 months ago

Bitcoin fixes this, too. And not in a lipstick-on-THIS-pig way.

RandomBacon• 12 months ago

Monero fixes it and does a better job.

starmole• 12 months ago

Oh, but it's backwards. The call of "Fair Access to Banking" means actually "Easy Access to Suckers".

Fair Access to Banking

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