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Seth Eisen
Postal banking is a thing in some places.
I’m not sure I want the government running those services. Like a basic one, sure, but for handling credit cards and general banking services? Nah, I don’t want the Trump administration having direct access to my purchases.
I don’t see any reason to trust the credit industry more than the government, though.
The main reason is that the credit industry isn’t in the business of running an intelligence service or part of law enforcement. That said, what they are connected to is almost the same as an intelligence service, that being the advertising industry, and there’s literally nothing stopping them from selling or even being forced to give their data to law enforcement. The only reason it doesn’t happen more I’d say is just the optics of it.
Ultimately what’s needed is a digital payment system that’s at least somewhat anonymous, but that’s an incredibly hard nut to crack. Bitcoin tried it, but largely failed to do so (and immediately got corrupted by speculators that wanted to use it as a forex instead of currency). A couple of the other crypto currencies that have come out since then have claimed to be better but I’m still incredibly skeptical that there’s any real anonymity there.
Someone above linked GNU Taler which seems to go in the right direction, but I’m not sure how mature it is yet. It specifically claims to not be a new currency, so hopefully the speculation part won’t be an issue.