MasterCard's duopoly (with Visa) of all electronic payment systems in the world is so well-known it is often used as the first example of such a market in economics courses. "Legacy" payment systems such as cheques and cash are being slowly replaced by systems very much controlled by MasterCard or Visa.

This is troublesome for two reasons.

The first is political; both companies are American. This gives the American government way too much control over such critical infrastructure. Even if they do not overtly mess with the system, they most certainly are passing all this information on to their intelligence agencies. Even a single worthy competitor from somewhere else would be a huge improvement.

The second is that it stifles innovation. Because of the lack of a well-established competition, the only innovation these companies are interested in is new products that make use of their existing infrastructure. Contactless payments on mobile phones could have been reality five years ago, but MC and Visa have to jump through several hoops and require special SIMs to have it all run over the infrastructure they sell instead of the internet. And the banks are happy to wait instead of innovating themselves.

I'm all for killing cash by digital means. But not if these two companies are doing it.