The catalonian government, which is an autonomous community of Spain, held a referendum to secede. The Spanish shut down polling stations, but they declared independence anyways, so the central government implemented direct rule and arrested the separatist politicians responsible for it.
This is fake, nothing has changed. Google has never formally labeled Palestine on the map. A quick search for "Google maps Palestine" reveals that articles like this pop up once every year.
The ability to purely make transactions is trivial - you can just use a debit card. The value of credit cards comes from other factors like fraud protection, SCI compliance, actual credit, etc.