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Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment
(www.lesnumeriques.com)
this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
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Can I ask what is to stop groups like collective shout from putting pressure on "sovereign" payment processors? Being a smaller entity opens them up to more litigation and lobbying by groups that claim to want to protect the children.
There is no need to put the "sovereign" in quotes: these are sovereign payment processors, run by the countries in Europe themselves. Pressure from an Australian political group is going to make absolutely no difference to them.
The main target in any case is different: when an ICC judge was sanctioned by the Trump administration, they lost all access to online payments and platforms. Depending on American companies for card/online payments is too risky and creates a dependency that could shut down European economies at a whim from the White House.
I think you missed the point. You seem to assume that I'm against doing this. I said "like collective shout" because they are an example of a lobby group influencing the government, public opinion, and businesses against a free and open internet, or influencing the rise of ID law to "save the children".
I understand that this is supposed to release Europeans from being beholden to American companies. But that also was not my question.
I feel like your question ignores reality in favour of a hypothetical.
Historically, the European Union has done more to protect individuals against the power of corporate giants through consumer rights legislation and against the power of the state and others through human rights legislation than most other organisations on the planet.
You could equally well ask, what's to stop a future AOC presidency from reducing the minimum wage and abolishing the Affordable Care Act? The answer is "probably nothing - the Constitution is in tatters and the Supreme Court has abolished its own power". But the question itself is responsible for the wholly misleading answer.
There's been a significant number of EU countries that are introducing ID Age Verification laws. The EU in particular is rolling out regulations that would require age verification.
We already know that there are groups like collective shout that are influencing these pushes the world over (and corps doing the same thing behind the scenes).
So your analogy is poor because it doesn't incorporate real political leanings for the people you mention.
If you don't like the question you don't have to answer. But my question isn't out of the realm of reality here.
If people can lobby to force payment processors to do something in a country where those same payment processors aren't even based, they can do it in EU countries.
I don't think those groups are so powerful in Europe