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Comment by _1tem | Hacker News Reader

One way to solve this problem is to have a certain commodity require the new payment method. If AWS for example created a new currency/payment method and made it the sole accepted way to pay for servers it could very quickly catch on as others adopt. Look how “Sign in with Google” became the default.

I’m pretty sure the main reason Apple/Google/Microsoft haven’t done this already is because they would be directly competing with the US government. The idea must get shut down pretty quickly by powerful people.

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> The idea must get shut down pretty quickly by powerful people.

There’s no larger conspiracy here. It’s that payments is a commodity now, with shrinking margins and high competition. It’s not worth it for most players to even enter the space, let alone compete tooth and nail for a shrinking share of the pie.

No conspiracy? Is that why the US government also tries to prevent other countries like Brazil from internationalizing their payment systems like Pix?

Apple/Google/Amazon/Microsoft could save billions on credit card processing fees by cutting out Visa/Mastercard -- but instead are pressured to accept "special rates" and warned to stay out of the business.

Show me where they’re “warned to stay out of the business”

Surely you must be thinking of mob movies, not the payments space.

There's evidence that Visa and Mastercard tried to prevent Apple from building their own network, including DOJ antitrust complaints in 2024 and a more recent suit in July 2025. The fact that antitrust allegations failed to make it in court despite it being such an obvious antitrust case against the duopoly very much suggests that there is something more going on behind the scenes. This seems like such an easy antitrust case to win, especially when it was used successfully in the Visa vs. Plaid case (another case where a potential competitor was prevented from building an alternative to Visa/Mastercard) - Plaid dropped their plans to build a network after their acquisition was cancelled.

There's no way that I can take such strange goings-ons at face value - Apple only gains by disintermediating Visa and they clearly tried at some point, but something stopped them. What stopped them? Too hard for Apple? They already built the infrastructure for it with Apple Pay and Apple Cash. What stopped them from going all the way? I'm convinced something more powerful stopped them.

See here: https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/apple-visa-maste...

There is plenty evidence of shadowy forces shutting down payment systems, just look at Marc Andreessen's public statements about crypto founders he invested in getting debanked.

https://medium.com/@nic__carter/marc-andreessen-and-the-cfpb...

Apple does not only gain by disintermediating Visa. Apple takes a cut on every purchase through Apple Pay (.15%), which is more than Visa's cut (.14%). Apple probably hasn't made a payment network because it would have to either create a settlement network (which is hard even for Apple, and Visa/Mastercard as settlement networks get less of a cut than Apple does without bothering), or Apple would have to buy a bank and become an issuer. Why don't they buy a bank? Maybe Visa / Mastercard scared them away from it. Maybe they don't want to deal with underwriting and return risks and all of that. It does deviate quite far from their core business.

Thanks for the clarification I stand corrected. Still pretty shady what’s done to crypto founders though, but they’re in a shady business already. Blocking Brazils Pix from going global is more egregious.

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