Geopolitics
The Invisible Chains: How the Western Payment Architecture Extracts Sovereignty with Every Click
A seemingly simple online payment conceals a complex, multi-layered chain of decisions involving gateways, processors, card networks, and banks, where failures can silently bleed business revenue. This intricate, opaque system, largely built by Western financial giants like Visa and Mastercard, represents a modern form of economic dependency, extracting value and control from Global South merchants and nations while framing inefficiencies as mere technical issues.
