Canada

And it is orders of magnitude cheaper for retailers than credit cards.

Eh, sorta.

We have digital payment cards in Interac. A bunch of the chip components come from other countries though, and are part of an integrated supply chain, if that matters. You're right though, that a chip card / payment card, is 'technically' functioning very similarly to a credit card these days.

Where they're different is in the settlements and insurance side of the transactions. Debit cards are nearly instant settlements in most cases, and require funds to be present in accounts. Credit cards allow for delayed settlement based on statement reviews -- so you can challenge bogus payments later, at your convenience, in theory. Both provide a degree of insurance, but generally the CC is better on that front -- this is also likely why they're much more broadly accepted in online payments.

Debit cards can theoretically be sync'd up with a personal loan, to function similar to a credit card in that you can "spend" money you don't "have" -- but doing so would require adjustments to Interacs terms, and likely trigger non compete clauses with Mastercard/Visa for anyone tryin to go that route. In terms of that 'credit' though, on a debit card it'd be entirely the liability of the bank/credit union issuing the card -- with a proper 'credit' card, that liability/risk is essentially offloaded to a larger company that can accommodate larger risk, albeit with higher % interest across the board.

Another fun one though, if you're thinking credit cards.... is that Canada should have its own Canada-focused Credit Bureau. Using US companies like Equifax, means all your credit information is already in the hands of the US Government, even if they have "canadian" wings, due to the US's Cloud act. Same goes for our government / institutions continuing to use things like Microsoft clouds -- all that data is just exposed, and Canada's doing/done nothin about it. There're fairly clear reasons the US considers Canada their bitch, I mean, our own government/regulators literally cannot function without US tech companies supporting them / providing them with service.

*just an edit to add another fun situation to watch in the financial area -- all the Credit Union mergers goin on, and what's happening in that space. Canada's credit unions are generally outsourcing their online banking applications to either the USA, or India. Even more hilarious, is that mergers are being effectively 'forced' by CEO's chasing golden parachutes. I know of at least one medium sized CU in BC who's CEO is an absolute idiot when it comes to outsourcing, and is well known as such by many -- for a smaller CU, she started emulating the outsourcing habits of big financial institutions she was hoping to merge with for that golden retirement package like a decade ago. Literally doing onboarding to such products with those big future merger partners, because it was a done deal before it ever went off for a vote to the membership. She picked up ridiculous operating expenses, which the CU couldn't really control -- like paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for Salesforce, with its 6% YoY increase, is 'surprisingly' not a sustainable smaller business thing to do. But she turned around and used that OpEx to go to the membership later and say "We can't possibly continue to operate, look at our ballooning OpEx! We need to merge with bigger CUs!". It's sorta a 'starve the beast' type tactic, done to the disservice of the membership, and for the personal profit of the CEO. And our regulators are cool with it -- hell, our regulators are encouraging this sort of thing, just like they're encouraging selling every Canadians online banking login authentication process off to the USA/India, at least one of which is a country totally not known for any kind of fraud industry what-so-ever, no ethical concerns, and who's never been connected to assassinations on Canadian soil. I mean, when I bank with my local Canadian community credit union, I obviously expect the USA or India's government to get access to my data.... and that's LARGELY because the BIG credit unions like Vancity want it that way, and have forced it on every other CU. There's even at least one BC CU that's given an India-based AI company access to practically all their member information from the sounds of things.

Like the trade association (Central1) is controlled by those big CUs, and it handles most settlements. Rather than maintain their geo-distant data-centres on different sides of the country, they're just sticking it all into Microsoft's cloud. So even all the cheques and payments that get processed, are within reach of the US govt due to the Cloud act. Regulators are 100% cool with it, cause the regulators are literally in Microsoft's cloud too, exposing all the personal data they take from the industry to US interest already. The BC regulators literally demand all private information for every person that has an account at a Credit Union, for vague "risk" reasons -- they post that openly on their BC FSA website, in guidelines/requirements for industry; I've previously poked the OIPC about it, and the Privacy Commissioner apparently doesn't see anythin wrong with it. And this shits literally happening like this year, while the govt is busy pretending to be all "elbows up"; they're continuing on with rampant rubber stamping of the outsourcing of core / critical canadian functions to foreign interests.

I'd still prefer something independent from other nations.

We're also an international destination for education, travel, and business. We absolutely could present an alternative to VISA and expect international participation.

Don't get all isolationist, my friend. Having domestic options is a good idea, but you will be dependent on international countries somehow. And that's true for the world, right?

So, maybe soften your stance. Or don't, as you prefer.

Don't we have JCB? Is that piggybacking off MC or Visa's infrastructure?

And yes, you can do online payments using stuff like PayPay.

I know. It's ridiculous.

Maestro you mean?

Hahahahaha I dunno I saw a sticker for it somewhere recently. I also had one when I was working at Deloitte for expenses.