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UK banks plan Visa and Mastercard alternative amid Trump fears

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/feb/16/uk-bank-bosses-plan-visa-mastercard-alternative
7•tosh•1h ago

Comments

ggm•1h ago
To be clear I believe there is no particular tech competency gap here, UK and EU have had digotal clearing house and settlement systems for decades. The risk is that Visa and Mastercard have jurisdictional obligations which without a complete company restructure and investment program they cannot shed. We're captive to the whims of US trade and other strategic international disputes.

So what's required is the business structure, the governance and a staff hire which avoids risk of exposure to US FTC and courts, in as much as anyone can given extraterritorial reach.

Australia had BPAY, we ditched it for Visa/Mastercard aligned debit and credit systems. As far as I know all of stripe and the like are US companies too. Europe has national systems like the Dutch iDEAL which when I used it in 2015 demanded a hardware 2fa device. And card payments for transport and shops without a Dutch banking backer was logistically harder. I'm sure there are others in Europe, each fiercely defending a national border and none until now willing to federate.

The UPU backed giro for a while. I liked giro, and I like national post offices but they all get privatised.

PKI experts tell a funny story about bootstrapping the trust anchor for the cards, and then destroying the HSM physically so no more top level root signings exist. Some execs tried to keep their fragment of destroyed crypto and like terminator, the security wonks told them the risk of chip recovery was too high so no lucite desk ornaments allowed.

1984 Bhopal Disaster

https://vvesh.de/death/bhopal
2•pryncevv•2m ago•0 comments

Show HN: PgCortex – AI enrichment per Postgres row, zero transaction blocking

https://github.com/supreeth-ravi/pgcortex
1•supreeth_ravi•3m ago•0 comments

Two-thirds of Ukraine intelligence today comes from France

https://militarnyi.com/en/articles/france-s-space-intelligence-where-does-two-thirds-of-ukraine-s...
1•giuliomagnifico•5m ago•0 comments

I built a free alternative to Datadog Synthetic Monitoring using Playwright

2•rizqtek•6m ago•0 comments

Sony Considering Pushing Back PS6 to 2028 or 2029 Amid AI-Fueled Chip Crisis

https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-reportedly-considering-pushing-back-ps6-release-to-2028-or-even...
1•layer8•8m ago•0 comments

We need to build more AI datacenters – Anakin Padme Video Meme

https://twitter.com/charliebcurran/status/2022463429823598999
1•looofooo0•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Low-rank approximation for 3x3 FPGA convolutions (33% less DSP usage)

https://www.dockerr.blog/blog/lowrank-hardware-approximation
1•el_dockerr•10m ago•1 comments

Show HN: RepoClip – Generate promo videos from GitHub repos using AI

https://repoclip.io/
1•Kazutaka_S•12m ago•0 comments

GrapheneOS – Break Free from Android and iOS

https://blog.tomaszdunia.pl/grapheneos-eng/
1•to3k•15m ago•1 comments

Imposter Game Words

https://impostorkit.com
1•leolula•15m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Fixing AI's Core Flaws, A protocol cuts LLM token waste by 40–70%

1•WujieGuGavin•16m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Mcpd – MCP Server SDK for Microcontrollers (ESP32/RP2040)

https://github.com/redbasecap-buiss/mcpd
1•redbasecap•16m ago•0 comments

My performance art-like piece: The Slopinator 9000

https://github.com/raka-gunarto/slopinator-9000
1•rakag•17m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Why were green and amber CRTs more comfortable to read?

1•CalvinBuild•20m ago•1 comments

Show HN: MCP Codebase Index – 87% fewer tokens when AI navigates your codebase

https://github.com/MikeRecognex/mcp-codebase-index
1•localforthewin•21m ago•0 comments

How to Red Team Your AI Agent in 48 Hours – A Practical Methodology

1•manuelnd•24m ago•0 comments

I wasted 80 hours and $800 setting up OpenClaw – so you don't have to

https://twitter.com/jordymaui/status/2023421221744877903
1•MrBuddyCasino•24m ago•0 comments

Europeans are dangerously reliant on US tech Now is a good time to build our own

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/17/europeans-are-dangerously-reliant-on-us-tec...
2•beardyw•27m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How Reliable Is Btrfs?

1•pregnenolone•32m ago•2 comments

Who Killed Kerouac

https://whokilledkerouac.com/mission
1•xavaki•33m ago•0 comments

Show HN: MCP Storage Map – One MCP Server for MySQL, MongoDB, and Athena

https://github.com/cyhoon/mcp-storage-map
1•jeffchoi•38m ago•0 comments

WD and Seagate confirm: Hard drives sold out for 2026

https://www.heise.de/en/news/WD-and-Seagate-confirm-Hard-drives-for-2026-sold-out-11178917.html
56•layer8•39m ago•22 comments

The Creator of OpenCode Thinks You're Fooling Yourself About AI Productivity

https://blog.codacy.com/the-creator-of-opencode-thinks-youre-fooling-yourself-about-ai-productivity
2•thunderbong•41m ago•0 comments

Elon Musk on Space GPUs, AI, Optimus, and His Manufacturing Method

https://cheekypint.substack.com/p/elon-musk-on-space-gpus-ai-optimus
1•JeanKage•42m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Llmfit;94 models, 30 providers.1 tool to see what runs on your hardware

https://github.com/AlexsJones/llmfit
1•axjns•42m ago•0 comments

Margins Aren't Just Numbers

https://news.ycombinator.com/submit
1•usus87•43m ago•2 comments

Zero Knowledge (About) Encryption: Security Analysis of Password Managers

https://zkae.io/
2•mweibel•47m ago•0 comments

Japan Is What Late-Stage Capitalist Decline Looks Like

https://oceandrops.substack.com/p/japan-is-what-late-stage-capitalist
8•olabolola•50m ago•0 comments

Product Management is all about people, not technology

https://www.leadinginproduct.com/p/product-management-is-a-people-role
3•benkan•51m ago•2 comments

Precious Computer Age relic, Unix v4, turns up in Univ. of Utah storage room

https://attheu.utah.edu/science-technology/precious-computer-age-relic-turns-up-in-u-storage-room/
1•gurjeet•52m ago•0 comments