Most of us thought that Wikileaks are putting politicians on a spot: primarily because they have been doing things behind our backs. Saying one thing on public platforms and another behind closed doors. Of course we knew that this is the case anyhow... so we didn't need a Wikileaks story to tell us that.The volume of all the documents on Wikileaks and the fact that the information is now distributed on multiple mirror servers, makes this virtually impossible to search. This is why I found it interesting to read about the efforts of Visa's public relations head in Russia, Dmitriy Vishnyakov in a leak. according to the leak, Dmitriy lobbed the US to work against a proposed Russian law that would weaken the position of VISA and MasterCard in Russia.
Payments are such an important cog in the wheel of any economy that control over or influence in the workings of payments can be very profitable. This is why many players will use any means to ensure that they remain valid and entrenched if possible. I am not saying that lobbying politicians is wrong to achieve specific objectives - it happens all the time, but in the case of the payments eco-system, should we not have a more transparent and open discourse... seeing that it impacts all of us?