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...