Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

Amazon, Walmart, Target and then increasingly unsure.

But they have partnered with GS and MC. Far from any sort of "finance industry roots".

They essentially offer a fancy UI on top of GS products and other traditional banks.

Apple Cash -> Green Dot or some other no name bank

Apple Card -> Goldman Sachs

Apple Pay -> some very small percentage of the bank and network fees charged to merchants

In days of yore, Visa did processing on IBM iron. The iron in question took a while to boot, and time is very definitely money to Visa and they wanted to speed up reboots (e.g., after a crash). Saving seconds = $$$.

Visa to IBM: "Please give us the source code for the <boot path stuff>, it's costing us money."

IBM: LOL

Visa to some big banks: "Please tell IBM to give us the source code for this, it's costing you money."

IBM, a little later: "Here's a tape. Need any help?"

Visa is a clearing house whose members are banks. Think of it like a payment router between issuers (banks) and processors (banks).

Only sponsored organizations can directly use the "Visa rails", where "sponsor" is defined as a bank, a bank subsidiary, or an entity previously sponsored by one of the other two.

This is also the case for MasterCard and Discover. "Traditional" American Express is different though.

> Amazon, Walmart, Target and then increasingly unsure.

Those merchants use banks or one of their subsidiaries for processing credit card transactions. Most large merchants do as well in order to minimize their discount rate as well as other transaction fees. Smaller merchants often use ISO's or VAR's for business specific reason, knowing both ultimately transact with a bank or one of a bank's subsidiaries.

In some countries the vast majority of payments are done via phone apps for national payment systems already, bypassing Visa/Mastercard etc. entirely. Even kids pay for candy by phone.

[1] as a random example: https://archive.kyivpost.com/technology/japanese-payment-sys...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pix_(payment_system)

> Likely Apple currently has the deepest finance industry roots.

Apple used a very large bank headquartered in the US for its credit card processing as of about ten years ago. Given that the cost of change is significant once these processes are put in place, it is likely this remains the case.

Note that this is not the same as what Apple Pay supports.

I know at least two of the above used to use a specific US bank for the credit card transactions backing their payment services. For others, if service usage requires a verified credit card or debit card backed by a credit card network, they too use a processor owned/operated by a bank, bank subsidiary, or an entity sponsored by same.

EDIT:

For payment services which do not require a credit card or debit card backed by a credit card network, they almost certainly use the ACH[0] network. This is a more intimate financial relationship and best used with a dedicated bank account not linked to any others, as fund transfers can be bidirectional.

0 - https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/ach-vs-check/

Interac[1] is Canada's debit system, originally created as a non-profit by our largest banks way back in '84, and these days is supported everywhere. The large banks are already used to bullying their way through political or bureaucratic challenges, and a single Canadian bank typically has trillion(s) in managed assets - they _can_ bully Visa.

Zelle[2] (2016) is a limited (etransfer only) clone for the American market, UPI (2016) in India, UnionPay (2002) in China, carte Bleue (1967) in France, etc etc. What's missing is cooperation between national systems like these, as well as lending as they typically only do debit instead of credit.

Any cooperation between these systems would likely get spun out as a separate entity, which would eventually just turn into a new Visa or Mastercard - but 3 choices is better than 2.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interac [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelle [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface

Those are all US companies so subject to the same puritan pressures. Their cards would still be good for buying ultra violent games but not sex games...

China would never! /s

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36012866

And really, even banking isn't a safe harbor. I am pretty sure they were at the forefront of the rise in neobanks and products like green dot cards.