You Will Never Send Money Digitally Without a Private Company — If the GOP Gets Its Way

Americans who want to transfer money online have options. They can go with services like Venmo and PayPal, make transfers from their personal bank, or do a transaction with stablecoins issued by cryptocurrency companies.

All those options have something in common that may not always occur to consumers: The transfers are offered by exclusively by private companies. That means users’ accounts aren’t stuffed with physical dollars, but rather with promises made by private companies to make the recipient whole.

Unlike with cash money, the system creates a middleman for every dollar spent — and an opportunity for them to make a profit off the digital equivalent of something so simple as handing someone else a bill.

There is a future where every monetary transaction between people involves private interests.

There’s no way to send money digitally without involving a company that has an angle. With cash on the way out — the last penny was just minted, for instance — there is a possible future where every single monetary transaction between people involves private interests.

The little-noted distinction raises a question: Why can’t the actual backer of the dollar — the U.S. government — create a way to send money itself? Academics have been exploring this question for years, asking why the federal government can’t back its own digital currency to facilitate transfers between people.

A system with a central bank digital currency, as it’s known, could operate as a public good, advocates say, with po