I think its a rent seeker when uncle sam either dictates you give them money or buries you in shit you have to pay acme shovel co to dig yourself out of.

I think its more tenable for governments to provide an optional sales tax as a service and remit the money to the states. One singular report to file one party to pay.

If the service they're providing is only necessary because of artificial barriers, then basically yes. The banking cartel that controls the payment system is a huge fan of collecting economic rents, yes.

So how do you purport to have a global electronic payment network?

If the EU can manage instant bank transfers that cost less than a penny, the US can manage it too.

Bank transfer fees have nothing to do with the fees charged when taking payments via credit cards.

While the average EU interchange fee for taking credit cards is cheaper than in the US, it’s not “less than a penny”

https://www.valuepenguin.com/interchange-fees-na-vs-eu

Yeah, that's kind of the point. Credit cards are mostly supplied by a couple huge companies that aren't interested in improving their rates. It's very rent-seeking, even though there are very feasible alternatives that cost an order of magnitude or two less.

They aren't interested in improving their rates because providing a competitive credit card in the US isn't cheap. You've got cards that provide 2% flat cash back (Citi Double Cash, for example), or cards that provide even higher benefits on rotating or fixed categories. Interchange fees aren't going to drop unless American cardholders are okay with dropping these benefits, and seeing as merchants aren't likely to share the savings I don't see that happening.

The time to lower interchange fees was before reward programs became standard, interest is where card issuers make their money.

> Credit cards are mostly supplied by a couple huge companies that aren't interested in improving their rates.

This situation is called an oligopoly. I don't think it has something to do with government sanctioned rent seeking.

Government-sanctioned rent-seekers are not the only kind. The comment by User23 was about payment system rent-seekers in general, with no mention of the government.

The original comment I replied to was about a software as a service company that was a “rent seeker” because it helped businesses manage thier tax liability.

At one small company I worked for, we paid SAAS companies for:

- expense reporting and reimbursement (Concur)

- managing payroll

- Managing retirement benefits

- source control hosting (Github)

- Infrastructure (Microsoft Azure)

- Salesforce (I don’t know what they do)

- Training and Compliance

- Chat (Slack)

- Email, Office software (Microsoft Office 365)

- vending services

Etc.

How are these companies any different than the company that helps businesses manage tax collection? They all saw a business opportunity and my company was glad to pay them so it could focus on its niche.

Yes but the mentioned problem comes from the companies forming an oligopoly.

VISA and MasterCard do pretty well from what I hear. PayPal too.