Anybody who didn’t see this coming a decade ago hasn’t been paying attention.

“Payment systems are blocked for him, as US companies like American Express, Visa, and Mastercard have a virtual monopoly in Europe.”

https://www.heise.de/en/news/How-a-French-judge-was-digitally-cut-off-by-the-USA-11087561.html

Heavy-handed sanctions have mostly landed on people who deserve them, which has made them seem okay. But as I’ve been pointing out for years now, without proper rule-of-law, anybody can be crushed at the whim of a couple of people in the U.S. government.

@philipbrewer Scary. I suppose the same could happen to anyone (like me!) in the US. Reminds me of recent conversations here about how we should maintain a presence in the cash economy.

@JohnBrady The cash economy is a nice backup to the credit and debit payments system economy, but I’ve always had a sneaking admiration for the non-money economies: www.wisebread.com/opting-ou…

@philipbrewer @JohnBrady I’ve suddenly noticed added fees for use of credit card cropping up on bills. So I’m currently carrying more cash than I prefer while exploring how low (or non-existent) the fee would be for a debit card.

@ReaderJohn Debit cards are much cheaper for the merchant, so they can choose to pass that along. Or not. (Some of the low-margin places where I shop offer a small discount for using a debit card, or waive the usual fee they charge for credit cards. Most other businesses seem to find it better to just charge everyone the same price and eat the fees. Especially the high-margin businesses: They don’t want customers to be thinking that hard about prices.)

@philipbrewer I remember. It creeped me out. I came out of the pandemic more libertarian/anarchist than I went in.

@philipbrewer @ReaderJohn A couple of local ice cream places give discounts if you pay with cash. I don’t know about debit cards. When we used to eat in Pittsburgh I noticed a number of restaurants (all Asian if that’s relevant) only accepted cash, but provided an ATM in the lobby; good thing, since almost every customer had to use it to pay for their meal. Now that I think of it, there was probably an ATM fee that the restaurant could pocket…