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this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
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Payment processors are a blight
Actually yeah. Completely useless intermediaries just leeching other peoples money.
I understand the sentiment but payments are quite a bit more complex that people tend to realize. For most companies, handling payments directly without an intermediary is far too expensive, complex and risky.
Fuck MasterCard and VISA btw.
Source: I work for a PSP.
What's a PSP
Payment Service Provider
Payment Service Providers sit in between companies (eg webshops) and payment methods/banks/card schemes. So as a webshop, instead of having to integrate with a bank to do transfers or with PayPal, you only integrate with the PSP. A lot simpler to do, and instead of having to chase each individual payment method for your money, the PSP will handle that for you. They can also provide additional services like a unified dispute view, credit management, small loans, etc...
Letting the post office become a bank. Which is an idea that’s been floated for like a century.
The post office in our country became a bank, and then the bank-and-post-office was privatized and bought up and now the mail sucks and the former postal bank is investing in the Palestinian genocide (real estate on Palestinian land, weapons research with field tests on Palestinians, etc.).
They would do everything a normal bank does. Here is an article that talks about the idea.
We have it in India. I usually prefer them to most banks for savings accounts, or FDs. Their rates are usually much better.
Make it happen and one day later they're arguing who to provide their services too and who not.
What is "the post office" for Europe?
AFAIK a lot of European countries have an equivalent of the USPS. Though in doing a quick search for this post I learned that Germany doesn’t have a state owned mail service anymore which is weird. Maybe it’s time for the EU to take on that role?
It's so dumb. We privatized all kinds of important infrastructure, then it became enshittified for revenue maximization and now it's broken, shitty and expensive.
Some postal service, trains, telecommunication service, banks, airports & airlines etc have been government owned a few decades ago and worked so so much better.
Yeah, most European countries don't have a government postal service. Either it's always been private or it was privatized decades ago. The USPS is fairly uncommon model.
Wellllll, let's make banks fulfil post office duties instead! :)
Dutchy here; our national post office has been privatised decades ago (it currently goes by the name of PostNL). I believe most (western) eu countries don't have a national postal service anymore, like there isn't a national phone, tv or internet provider anymore.
Same here in Sweden. Our right wing governments have destroyed everything in the last 30 years.
Our scumbag neoliberals privatized Deutsche Post in the 90s, but Deutsche Post AG is still legally obligated to provide basic mail service.
GNU Taler, which is an anonymous (for the sender, not receiver) digital cash.
If the FSFE were to use a bank utilizing that system, the bank would not be able to request the sender's information from them, as any person sending the donation is completely anonymous by design.
You can learn more about it over at !money@slrpnk.net
If the FSFE were to use gnu taller, the taler bank would've probably requested the same information through some other nonstandard channel sooner or later. The traditional electronic money has become like show breed dogs. They are no good without the papers. Especially in europe.
We need to eliminate the banks and the payment gateways from the paymemt process.
If a bank or preferably credit union adopts GNU Taler, they can't realistically expect the receiver of the tokens to know who sent the tokens due go their anonymous nature. A receiver could put an info form before the GNU Taler part, but the sender could just put john doe info there.
It is truly like cash. I know in the US many banks would get weirded out if you try to deposit a large amount if cash and may report it to the IRS, but as long as its reflected in your taxes, then it should be okay.
The only trouble is, that's exactly why they would refuse to adopt GNU Taler.
Some banks in Europe are already adopting it, and credit unions would be much more likely to as well.
Cash.
The non-profits I've donated to usually allow bank transfers and sending cash or checks by mail.