EU fines Mastercard more than half a billion euros
The card payment industry duopoly (in europe at least) is a really weird one that seems to go mostly unnoticed.<p>I often wonder how much goes into the pockets of these companies who are essentially providing an easily replaceable service if it were not for the entrenched reality. (IE; to compete you'd need an entirely new card system that would be incompatible with the others, and thus your card would be unusable in most places)<p>That said, I can't complain too much about VISA; which (Apple Pay and Samsung Pay also uses on the backend, there is no escape in Europe) -- they seem to be processing things fairly well, even if I don't understand how much both parties paying for such a service.