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

Okay so is Steam enough of a money printer for Valve to say "well fuck you guys, we'll make our own credit card with hookers and bingo"? And hold out Half-Life 3 (only purchasable with the ValveCard) as a carrot?

I am genuinely curious who can actually threaten Visa (I do not think it is Valve).

Amazon, Walmart, Target and then increasingly unsure.

Any coalition of banks can. Replacing Visa is a daunting task, but rolling out PoS support and the technical challenges are peanuts compared to actually getting banks onboard. Visa itself was started by a single bank, and Mastercard was started by a coalition of banks. They can do it again.

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