It is finally dawning on the government and the banking industry that it is not such a good idea to put the entire economy at the mercy of a couple of large overseas corporations. Today, a consortium of banks are meeting to hammer out a plan to create a homegrown alternative to Visa and Mastercard, which at present have a virtual duopoly on the handling of card payments in Britain and much of the developed world. Their fear, in particular, is that Donald Trump could simply order Visa and Mastercard to switch off their services to any country which displeased him. This is what happened in Russia after the Ukraine invasion, under the Biden administration, when Russian businesses suddenly found themselves unable to handle their customers’ payments.

But why has it taken this long for the UK financial industry to appreciate the vulnerability which comes with over-reliance on a highly-centralised payments system?........

© The Spectator