A payment system looks like a private service and behaves like a road.
Its value rises with the number of users, and that pushes every market towards one or two networks.
Card networks reached that position decades ago and set fees that cannot refuse.
Refusing means losing the customers who carry that card, which is most of them.
Regulators responded by the rather than by breaking the networks.
Merchants saved money, and the evidence that shoppers saw lower prices is weak.
Several countries then built public payment instead.
A central bank operates the transfer layer, and private firms compete on the application above it.
Transfers instantly and cost the sender nothing in the systems that work best.
in those countries has been faster than any commercial rollout achieved.
The design questions are not technical and are usually decided quietly.
Who may connect, what data the operator keeps and whether offline payment is possible all shape who is included.
A system that requires a smartphone and a signal excludes the people it is most often promoted as serving.
Cash remains the for that group and is withdrawn on commercial grounds by banks.
Deciding that a payment network is infrastructure implies a universal service duty, which no country has yet written.