Recently, 1000’s of flights had been canceled or delayed due to a Federal Aviation Administration system outage — leaving vacationers stranded and annoyed. The incident is a wake-up name for a way dangerous it may be to depend on a single system to drive a whole trade. When it breaks, all the pieces goes to hell in a handbasket.
But the FAA isn’t alone. Most Americans will possible be shocked to be taught that bank card customers are equally susceptible.
Visa and Mastercard dominate the U.S. bank card trade — controlling 80% of the market. So, chances are high that the cardboard you’ve gotten in your pockets is powered by certainly one of these two trade giants. Query: What occurs if one of many community methods fails due to a technical glitch and even an assault from one other nation? Consumers could be minimize off from a major fee technique to buy all the pieces from meals to fuel.
This is just not a thought experiment. Credit card networks have encountered blackouts earlier than. Last 12 months, Visa and Mastercard holders skilled processing points throughout the United States. In 2021, playing cards utilizing main fee processor TSYS failed — leaving companies starting from eating places to ballparks unable to just accept bank cards. And in 2018, Mastercard apologized for transactions being blocked for patrons worldwide ensuing from an outage.
With the rising competency of unfriendly governments to wage cyber warfare, it’s not troublesome to think about a coordinated assault that cripples a bank card community for days, if not weeks. Remember the hack on the Colonial Pipeline simply two years in the past?
But not like the FAA, which operates on a single built-in system due to security, Visa and Mastercard don’t have an excuse. The corporations have financial causes to freeze out the competitors, leaving customers susceptible. To make it occur, the tag workforce makes use of its appreciable market leverage to enter exclusivity contracts with banks and safe a duopoly market place.
Alternative bank card networks to Visa and Mastercard present the identical service. And if these networks had been allowed to compete on an excellent taking part in discipline, customers would take pleasure in a security internet. That manner, if Visa or Mastercard had been to expertise an outage, a service provider may faucet into the choice community on a client’s bank card to finish a transaction.
Federal laws was debated in 2022 and can possible be reintroduced this 12 months to perform that. Called the Credit Card Competition Act, the invoice would require banks with greater than $100 billion in property to incorporate not less than two unaffiliated processing networks on the bank cards they difficulty. In observe, the coverage would supply retailers with extra choices for ordering purchases and customers with extra paths to entry credit score.
As an additional advantage, the laws additionally addresses China UnionPay, a state-owned monetary providers company with a seat on the desk to assist set safety protocols for the bank card trade within the United States.
China has confirmed it’ll exploit any opening to get an edge on Americans. The nation has used its ties to American companies to steal upward of $600 billion in mental property. Chinese-owned medical corporations have shared American’s non-public genetic data — together with DNA — with the Chinese authorities. And the Chinese-owned TikTookay has collected and handed alongside knowledge from American cell telephones.
Is it a stretch to imagine China has a nefarious agenda for inserting itself into the U.S. bank card market? That’s why, underneath the Credit Card Competition Act, the Chinese Communist Party puppet could be banned from processing transactions within the United States.
Ask anybody caught in an airport whereas the FAA tried to handle its outage they usually’ll let you know: Americans can’t put all of their eggs in a single basket. Congress ought to take the FAA’s outage as a wake-up name and go the Credit Card Competition Act earlier than the identical outage hits American wallets.
Will Coggin is the managing director of the American Security Institute. He wrote this for InaspectSources.com.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”