Who watches those who watch our payments? The growing power of credit card giants

opinion

Vass Bednar is the managing director of the Canadian SHIELD Institute and co-author of The Big Fix .

Credit card companies were supposed to be boring (apart from the loyalty points): neutral vehicles for moving money. Today, the Visa and Mastercard duopoly wields more power over what we can read, watch and buy than many democratic governments. By quietly expanding their role from transaction processors to global regulators, they now wield state-like power, and Washington is moving to protect their dominance outside of the United States.

What began as risk management in the adult industry has spread into broader creative sectors. Visa and Mastercard famously cut ties with Pornhub in 2020 after allegations that the website featured unlawful content . More recently, under pr