Instead of tailoring this to financial service providers, create conditions for essential service operators that must ensure service delivery neutrality. That way, the legislation applies to all kinds of infrastructural services, and you don’t even open up the can of worms that is freedom of speech, since the affected companies don’t get to have a say in who they want to do business with.
For the US specifically (I can’t speak to other countries), that could be an excellent use case for the USPS: digital money orders. Pay with cash or debit card at the post office, claim it back to a bank account. Other postal services could reciprocate/honor those orders in that specific currency (or offer conversion at a publicized daily rate). Since it’s cash only (no credit), it significantly reduces chargebacks - and because it’s through national postal services, it still allows checking/tracking by governments to keep tabs on illicit transactions.
Thing is, that would absolutely be blocked by current payment providers and their lobbyists. I fully agree with you, though.
EDIT: Hah, I’m late to this party. Physical international money orders have already been discontinued by the USPS as of last year and are dwindling globally thanks to FinTech. The lack of a digital equivalent is definitely frustrating, as their flat fees and discretion were rather appealing.
This is basically Western Union. They have a worldwide network of offices, but I haven't seen an integration for online billing and sales from them. It would be ideal for selling online products to the unbanked or underbanked.
I'm familiar with Western Union, as it's how my local neighborhood sends money back home in stacks of twenties and hundreds, one money order at a time. The problem is theirs (and Moneygram's) fees can be insanely steep due to a lack of competition or government equivalents; the author of the original article rightly points out that wire transfers in the US can be INSANELY expensive as a result (my bank charges $20 per transfer; a domestic money order from USPS, by comparison, tops out at $3.60 for $1,000; WU quotes ~$45-$60 depending on country and method, with another $25 for credit cards). Add in growing nationalism about penalizing sending money across borders via these methods (as migrants often do when sending money back home), and the costs add up shockingly quick for what's effectively a digital ledger transaction on the back end.
To WU and Moneygram's credit, however, they do offer more digital wallet integrations and direct bank transfers nowadays. Their product lines are growing, but their fees aren't decreasing as they effectively have a captured (impoverished) market. Still, since money orders can be as safe as cash, having them as a viable alternative to the private payment card industry is necessary for business to function and smaller vendors to thrive, particularly in niche industries.
