they however ahould also be broken up grom a duopoly into maybe 500k different payment providers, each with their own bent on who to do business with

And how will that work for the rest of us?

Everyone has to carry around half a million credit cards? Every merchant has to make half a million separate payment processing agreements, each with its own card machine?

No; this is a natural monopoly situation, and just needs to be regulated hard.

There are two providers (more in fact, if you count country-specific providers), and they are interoperable.

Yes regulation are necessary, including for interoperability, but I don't really buy the natural monopoly argument (at least not more than any tech companies).

Eh sounds more like we need payment processing to be a public utility

I don't object to that idea at all. It sounds like Brazil has been having success with that recently.

...Of course, we do need some more safeguards first to make sure that such an entity wouldn't be massively abused by tyrannical executives cheerfully twisting the law into bizarre pretzel shapes in order to attack anyone who disagrees with them.

Can't wait until business owner start refusing to serve black people in the name of freedom of speech then.

You know this argument is in bad faith, and should feel bad for making it.

But, even if the Civil Rights Act didn't exist, this is an excellent way to go out of business near-instantly.

> Civil Rights Act

Good illustration that it's not about free speech, as if it was the law would be as unconstitutional as Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.

> this is an excellent way to go out of business near-instantly

It depends, there's an audience for Nazi bars too.