Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment

https://www.lesnumeriques.com/banque-en-ligne/adieu-visa-et-mastercard-130-millions-d-europeens-basculent-vers-un-paiement-100-souverain-des-2026-n250918.html

by healsdata • 2 months ago

959 755 2 months ago

lesnumeriques.com

JumpCrisscross3• 2 months ago

Banks in Spain, Italy and Portugal are joining what this article describes as France’s Wero system [1]. («L'initiative française Wero».)

Focus this year is on P2P transfers. Commerce is targeted for 2027. Given EuroPA has done a token amount of transactions to date, I’m not sure anyone should hold their breaths.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment)

toomuchtodo2• 2 months ago

Wero – Digital payment wallet, made in Europe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47038965 - February 2026 (132 comments)

Europe's Banks Launch Wero Payments to Dislodge Visa, Mastercard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41666833 - September 2024 (88 comments)

Unofficial Wero Adoption Tracker - https://www.werotracker.eu/

BadBadJellyBean7• 2 months ago

I wish Wero was a real alternative but it seem to be a thin wrapper around Bank APIs and SEPA instant transactions. It has pretty much non of the functionality that PayPal or other services give. It just makes it easier to send money with a phone number instead of an IBAN. My bank doesn't even support it.

rbanffy3• 2 months ago

My bank doesn't even support it.

It's not like it's that difficult to implement. Most Brazilian banks implemented a similar protocol in months.

KeplerBoy• 2 months ago

Isn't that much better than PayPal? Why would i want my money to end up in some intermediate PayPal account?

piva002• 2 months ago

Isn't a wrapper making the ergonomics better valuable enough?

In Sweden we have Swish for domestic transfers, if I could use Swish (or if Wero took it over) the same way to transfer money to my friends living in other EU countries I'd be very, very happy.

What kind of functionality PayPal offers that is much better? Using cards instead of direct debit?

trashb5• 2 months ago

non of the functionality that PayPal or other services give

What functionality are you looking for exactly?

I use paypal to transfer money to other accounts & pay for online shopping, possibly in other valuta. In my opinion Wero (earlier I used IDeal) is easier then paypal for this purpose

Carbon1603• 2 months ago

Isn't the whole point of existence of WERO that European banks got scared of digital Euro and started implementing something to get in the market first?

timpera3• 2 months ago

Wero is not French, but it has replaced France's Paylib. It's pretty awesome and seems to quickly have replaced all other apps (Lydia, PayPal) for small payments in my friend and family circles. I'm excited to see it expand to PoS payments.

DalasNoin• 2 months ago

Can you confirm people in france actually use wero? I had heard of it every so often but basically zero people actually use it, my revolut app has a feature to use wero but never used it. I mean would be great, getting rid of CC fees could literally lower grocery prices by 1-2%.

mcv9• 2 months ago

From what I understand, Wero is identical to iDeal, which has been the standard Dutch internet payment system for decades. So I'm a bit surprised to see France claim ownership.

bouk• 2 months ago

iDeal is an enormous success in the Netherlands so if banks implement it as well in other countries then it will definitely be competitive with credit cards for online payments

timpera3• 2 months ago

iDeal is in the process of being replaced by Wero, which is pretty cool!

spockz2• 2 months ago

Wero is the pan-European successor to ideal. Other countries had something similar. We are now converging on using the same technique and mechanism everywhere. It also takes a bite out of payment providers like adyen because they managed the different payment methods for shops. In the future you only need to use Wero.

mytailorisrich6• 2 months ago

What's the benefit of this over contactless payments?

mcv9• 2 months ago

It works over the internet.

microtonal2• 2 months ago

Ehm. Wero is partially based on the Dutch iDEAL system, which has been hugely successful.

Pretty much all purchases from Dutch webshops are paid through iDEAL as well as many P2P payments. It's also supported by international payment services (iirc Stripe and Shopify).

If they manage to replicate it in other European countries, Werk will be huge. Moreover, it's supported by many banks.

pimterry2• 2 months ago

Given EuroPA has done a token amount of transactions to date, I’m not sure anyone should hold their breaths.

The Spanish equivalent (Bizum) is merging into Wero is not a token use case, it's absolutely massive here. The absolute standard for peer-to-peer payments, more than 30 million users (>65% of the population), and they already launched contactless terminals for in-person commercial payments this month (https://euroweeklynews.com/2026/04/03/bizum-goes-contactless...).

JorgeGT• 2 months ago

Indeed Bizum is almost default now here in Spain, and for instance the equivalent in Sweden, Swish, is also almost default there. Went trekking into a national park, and the rangers will leave a number to Swish a bit of money if you want to use the fire pits; no other payment means.

upcoming-sesame3• 2 months ago

same for MBWay in Portugal

gsky• 2 months ago

I'm pretty sure American gov won't react kindly

WJW• 2 months ago

America: You need to be more self sufficient and not lean on us so much!

Europe: <launches European payment initiative>

America: NOT LIKE THAT!!!

dgellow5• 2 months ago

Just to add a little bit more context, European interbanking initiatives are older than Trump insanity. What we are seeing at play is a slow decades-old strategy finally bearing fruits. Though Trump is for sure a factor pushing for adoption.

weberer• 2 months ago

What a ridiculous strawman. A huge chunk of Americans are also calling for the end of the Visa/MasterCard duopoly and would love to jump on board to this.

drstewart4• 2 months ago

America: NOT LIKE THAT!!!

Can you post a source supporting this?

rbanffy3• 2 months ago

I'm pretty sure European governments know that and are prepared to deal with the temper tantrum.

mrits• 2 months ago

Which country in Europe is prepared to deal with anything? They can’t even break away from the country currently invading them

toomuchtodo2• 2 months ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43284950 - March 2025

“How can I decouple from the US as fast as possible?” is what this leads to.
Diplomacy is the art of saying “good dog” until you make it to the rock. The US will apply pressure for short term gain against allies while they move away long term.

simonask2• 2 months ago

Who cares at this point. Nothing has ever managed to unite Europeans as effectively as the orange man’s unrelenting torrent of temper tantrums over the past year and a half.

Americans, we know some of you aren’t crazy. Can’t wait for the grown-ups to be in charge again, but in the mean time we’ll be moving on.

swed42010• 2 months ago

Who cares at this point. Nothing has ever managed to unite Europeans as effectively as the orange man’s unrelenting torrent of temper tantrums over the past year and a half.
Americans, we know some of you aren’t crazy. Can’t wait for the grown-ups to be in charge again, but in the mean time we’ll be moving on.

Assuming by "grown-ups" you mean Team Blue, then you'll be disappointed, because they manufactured consent for "orange man" every step of the way. People are too easily fooled by the good cop / bad cop routine, which is why it's continuously deployed.

We have a uniparty with red and blue facades whose illusion apparently even pervades overseas. Buckle in for disappointment no matter where you live. As if your country doesn't have similar power struggles.

It's capital interests against everybody else. Always has been. "Lesser of two evils" is still evil.

stronglikedan2• 2 months ago

Here's the thing: the grown-ups are in charge now. It's just that all spoiled, bratty children are too entitled to notice. It's like a scene from a movie where a serious teacher gets assigned to a class of misfits - no matter what the teacher does right, they'll always be "wrong".

criddell• 2 months ago

I wouldn't be so sure, at least not this administration. Fragmented monetary systems provide more opportunities for creative accountants and that's something the people running everything in the US seem to benefit from.

CodingJeebus• 2 months ago

This action is a response to the tariff regime imposed by the US. The current administration decided that it was going to use its role as the leader of the global hegemon to threaten and coerce other countries, and actions like this are a result. The American government can threaten them all they want, problem is that they've been threatening everyone since Day 1.

reddalo3• 2 months ago

Too bad that, for Italy, BancomatPay joined instead of Satispay, an app that's actually used (especially in the North). Almost nobody uses BancomatPay.

epolanski3• 2 months ago

Satispay is no longer really used anymore.

It was only welcomed by merchants in the 0-fee era, now no merchant cares anymore as Satispay is no longer free of charge and pulled the rug.

And to send payments across friends there's instant bank wires (often free of charge), and even when it's not instant it is executed in few hours-one working day max which isn't a big issue when you're transferring money across friends.

reddalo3• 2 months ago

And to send payments across friends there's instant bank wires

That's nice (when it's free), but banking apps are clunky, unfriendly, heavy and slow. Unicredit and Intesa, two main Italian banks, both have apps that are atrocious to use and riddled with annoyances.

People want an easy and quick way to send/receive money (Satispay does that almost well).

And for some banks Wero seems like it's going to be available through your existing bank app. Which is a no-go for me.

nwatson• 2 months ago

Equivalent PIX is very popular in Brazil for instant payments.

coredev_• 2 months ago

The market for these kind of apps in Europe is very divided (just in the Nordics you have Swish, MobilePay and Vipps) but the dent in MC/Visas dominance is significant today. In 2 years, Klarna, Swish and Vipps will be more common both in e-commerce and POS that MC/Visa.

Do we need a pan-EU standard? I'm actually not so sure, but yes it would be nice when traveling.

petcat• 2 months ago

A Frenchman using Wero will be able to transfer money to a Spanish friend on Bizum, with the same simplicity as a domestic payment.

Have you seen the new money app? It's on Tubu. It's on Weeno. I'm on Dippy but my friend is on Poob. Poob has it for you.

btown• 2 months ago

For the uninitiated: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/poob-has-it-for-you

iamtheworstdev• 2 months ago

also relevant is the end of this SNL sketch from this last weekend - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS97AzfKp3U

shabgzer• 2 months ago

How mind-numbingly lame. Just another dime a dozen meme.

fontain2• 2 months ago

I’m 50. All startup news looks like this:

“Payments via Zoosha? K-smog and Batboy launch new startup.”

echelon• 2 months ago

It's better than that trend of taking English words and removing the final vowels before "r" or some other consonant.

atonse• 2 months ago

LOL thank you domain squatters. I can't think of any other reason why startups often always have the most ridiculous names.

fontain2• 2 months ago

Every single 3 and 4 letter .com domain has been registered for at least 20 years, not a single one is available to register. Domains aren’t the reason for names like “wiro” and “tubi”.

heffer• 2 months ago

I don't think it explains the "cat walks on keyboard" brand names for cheap Chinese goods on Amazon.

jeroenhd12• 2 months ago

A lot of these are puns/vague money sounding names in different languages.

Wero has got to be the worst of the bunch, though. An awkward combination of "we" and "euro" combined with "vero". At least the other pooq/wolo/snivum/rumio like names aren't trying to hard.

al_borland3• 2 months ago

It’s not just the domain squatters. They have to find a name they can get with Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc in addition to the domain.

p2detar3• 2 months ago

Sounds totally fine to me. I guess just like there are many Mastodon instances: mastodon.social, fosstodon, infosec.exchange, mas.to, etc., but one protocol by which they talk to each other.

kome• 2 months ago

ahahah!

so true. those names are silly. also, French and Spanish can already send money for free via IBAN / SEPA

p2detar3• 2 months ago

That's not the point at all. Currently I'm using paypal to send money to friends when we split dinner or share other costs. I'd like to use a similar European service instead and not go through a ceremony to open my banking app, initiate transfer, write the recipient's IBAN, confirm and wait a day for the transfer to take place.

gnfargbl• 2 months ago

Ah yes, Pierre will surely have no issues paying for his baguette et croissant by filling in the boulangerie's IBAN on his mobile phone and waiting 15 minutes for them to check receipt.

debugnik• 2 months ago

Wero and Bizum mostly just associate phone numbers to IBANs and perform instant SEPA transfers underneath. The benefit is that you only need the other's phone number to send them money, usually already in your contact list, instead of them sharing you a twenty-something digit number.

bad_username• 2 months ago

I can feel Galactus's pain.

sgjohnson3• 2 months ago

> A Frenchman using Wero will be able to transfer money to a Spanish friend on Bizum, with the same simplicity as a domestic payment.

SEPA Instant Payments also solves that.

dgan2• 2 months ago

I doubt so, because i need to type god-knows-how-many characters by hand, while visually separating them into chunks by 4, then explicitly authorize the receiver. Oh, and explicitly authorise the country

culhatsker• 2 months ago

Yes, the only difference is that you need to communicate your bank account number and likely your legal name.

drstewart4• 2 months ago

Wero and Bizum are built on top of SEPA anyway

hommelix• 2 months ago

SEPA Instant Payments also solves that.

Even more than now there is a QR code format for SEPA Instant Payments. Some invoice have a QR code and when it is scanned with a bank app, the fields for a bank transfer are prefilled. IBAN, amount, etc...

We just need an app to generate this QR code for the amount one wants to request.

jeanloolz• 2 months ago

Frenchman here, living in Spain. This speaks to me on many levels. Bizum is so integrated in my daily life in Spain, that I wished my french friends had it when we need to transfer money between each other. Looks like we're going in that direction. Phenomenal

HelloUsername• 2 months ago

Source was posted back in February: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46861789

wink• 2 months ago

Totally misleading. Without reading all of it: MAYBE it means: it is/will be enabled for 130m people.

And even those of us who have activated it, have hardly used it for the most part, or hve concerns.

bsimpson2• 2 months ago

It was weird to see them bragging about €6MM volume in the first year.

madspindel• 2 months ago

That number must be wrong? Swish volume during one month was €4759MM as comparison.

thibaut_barrere3• 2 months ago

The use is very high (daily) in my social circles these days. No more IBAN sharing. Non tech are on it. YMMV

pbmonster• 2 months ago

No, it's already 130M (out of the ~450M in the EU). Wero's predecessor (iDeal, Bizum, Paylib, Giropay) systems are already widely adapted in their countries of origin and will be fully compatible with it, and Wero itself has had a bit of time to pick up new users on its own by now.

spockz2• 2 months ago

Pretty much was already available via SEPA. We had a similar system in the Netherlands called ideal which has now been subsumed by Wero to join an European alternative. In the end the idea is simple. All participating bank accounts have lorum/nostrum accounts for the pairs. Whenever the Wero transaction succeeds the money is wired internally directly. I’m not sure whether this mechanism will be replaced by SEPA direct debit entirely.

paduc3• 2 months ago

I believe Wero is based on SEPA instant transfers. It just facilitates transfers by using emails, phone numbers or QR codes instead of IBANs.

epolanski3• 2 months ago

As political instability has shown, it is a bad idea to have all your payments go through a single, weaponizable, failure point in New York.

Europe needs to be functionally as independent as possible.

hiroto_lemon• 2 months ago

Wero rides on SEPA SCT Inst, already mandatory EU-wide. P2P will land fast; merchant displacement is hard because card interchange funds the chargeback layer SEPA doesn't replicate.

stldev• 2 months ago

Tant mieux pour eux.

I suppose some added sovereignty is to be expected when your closest ally extorts, threatens annexation and slams you with tariffs.

slau• 2 months ago

Maybe the original source that the current article links to is a better link: https://epicompany.eu/media-insights/bancomat-bizum-epi-sibs...

trumbitta2• 2 months ago

Spoiler: Europeans use whatever their banks provide.

jeroenhd12• 2 months ago

That's the thing, European banks provide Wero, or a system that integrates with Wero. Or Swish, but integration between the two is inevitable in the future.

This whole "new" ecosystem is just gluing together existing national digital payment solutions so it can be used internationally.

Staross• 2 months ago

It's already on my bank app since a couple of week, but I haven't tried it yet.

mcv9• 2 months ago

Wero is basically an EU-wide version of the Dutch iDeal system, which in my opinion is the gold standard of how internet payment should work. I shouldn't have to fill in any card numbers on the site of the merchant (which is unsafe). Instead, the payment should redirect me to my bank, where I authorize the payment through my own bank's security system. I've always been annoyed by the need to type in sensitive card info on all sorts of merchant sites. I hope that with EU-wide use, Wero will receive much broader support now.

jim180• 2 months ago

as it was the case in Baltic states since forever. Payments with CC came much later.

ramon156• 2 months ago

I think any dutchie can vouch that iDeal has been amazing. I would also like to add that Wise has been amazing for american payments. I needed it for Anthropic at the time, and this worked good enough

DonHopkins3• 2 months ago

Certainly better and easier to say than Chipknip!

cfontes2• 2 months ago

PIX from Brazil is even better, to be honest. But this is a big improvement over online CC payment.

I lived in the NL and Brazil, so I can compare the two, and while iDEAL is pretty good, PIX is easier to understand, explain, and deal with.

PIX has more variants, you can use it for recurrent payment, split payments, financing, cashout and almost all things a CC can do nowadays.

I would say Tikkie is almost as good and easy to use as PIX usecase wise but has less adoption and variants, also it belongs to ABN which is completely different from PIX approach.

sschueller2• 2 months ago

PIX is also better because it gives control back to the central bank (as it was with cash) and not private industry although they are providing the service. The central bank controls what payments are permitted by what laws exist, not some risk management system that has decided that your legal purchase is too risky or some foreign state has applied sanctions against you.

pprotas• 2 months ago

Tikkie has a different usecase. It's meant for smaller payments between individuals

In fact, you can pay a Tikkie using iDEAL/Wero

Imustaskforhelp3• 2 months ago

(I haven't tried PIX so not sure) but UPI is really great too and I think that Pix is similar to UPI and UPI was launched by India nearly 4 years ago than brazil.

Anyways, one of the things that I am interested about in payment systems is say creating cross-payments between Pix,UPI and Wero.

UPI is already there for a few countries and there are more trials which are happening and my brother was a bit involved in trying to add UPI to london. (I think it was some efforts by his college perhaps, I am not sure completely.)

For India, the largest points are remittances and for other nations, it gives a really well built payment system and integrates it to more economies.

UPI is accepted in seven countries: Bhutan, France, Mauritius, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

pimterry2• 2 months ago

Wero does have recurring payments planned too (apparently for end of 2026), seems like they're well aware of PIX and racing hard to get into exactly the same space.

somewhatgoated3• 2 months ago

PIX should be the gold standard for this - it’s works perfectly for all use cases that I can think of.

Hell even the homeless people around here take donations in PIX, but you can also buy a house with it. Zero fees involved

sam_lowry_2• 2 months ago

Nah, BLIK from Poland was there earlier and is in many ways better, Wero was unfairly lobbied for by the old European guard, so most of Eastern Europe walked away.

They are now hesitantly joining Wero, supporting it only to downplay and to lobby ECB for an API platform and not for a product.

krthr• 2 months ago

I think Colombian's Bre-B system took heavy inspiration on PIX. It is amazing and so easy to use.

SomeUserName4324• 2 months ago

PIX from Brazil is even better, to be honest.

You lack the inherent fraud, bankruptcy and other malicious actor protection that Visa/Mastercard provides.

Bought something online and didn't receive your product? With PIX you're SOL, with Visa/Mastercard you get a chargeback.

sverhagen• 2 months ago

you can use it for recurrent payment, split payments, financing, cashout and almost all things a CC can do nowadays

But can credit cards really do all those things? You just entrust your credit card number to a party that does it for you, but the credit card system itself isn't taking care of those things like recurring payments.

gfarah• 2 months ago

Since last year, Colombia has implemented Bre-B, our copy of Brazil’s Pix, and it’s been fantastic. I can’t wait to see it mature to the same level as Pix, and I really hope both systems are eventually linked together.

throwaway20376• 2 months ago

This is a brilliant response. I love personal anecdotes like this that meaningfully contribute to a better conversation on HN.

First: PIX sounds insanely good! I wish I had it where I live.

My follow-up question: Can anyone with experience with India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) comment about capabilities compared to PIX? It is frequently lauded as one of the best e/mobile payment services in the (developing) world.

Fnoord6• 2 months ago

iDeal can also be used for recurring payment. I set one up yesterday.

If you like Tikkie, you may like bunq as well.

This is kind of a problem with Wero though [1]:

The Wero app can be installed on any mobile device or tablet running iOS 16 or later, or Android version 9 or later. We recommend updating your device to the latest version of its operating system for maximum performance, convenience and security.
It is not possible to use Wero via a web browser or on a computer.

Why the ** am I constricted to using an app on Android or iOS. Ever heard of laptops? Windows? ChromeOS? macOS? Linux in general?

[1] https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599074240...

F3nd0• 2 months ago

For day-to-day payments, GNU Taler seems like the best option by far, since it protects the customers’ anonymity. (It’s essentially like digital cash.) Unfortunately, only very few banks support it at the moment.

https://www.taler.net/en/

kccqzy3• 2 months ago

There is a 3DSecure system for existing Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. After typing your card numbers, the transaction doesn’t immediately go through but you are also redirected to the bank’s system. Banks can ask you to use a hardware token, an app, or any other second factor to approve the transaction.

It’s a shame that this system isn’t ubiquitous for the rest of us not in EU.

Xirdus2• 2 months ago

The problem with 3D Secure is that the merchant can unilaterally decide not to use it, which defeats the whole purpose of 3D Secure.

jonkoops• 2 months ago

After typing your card numbers

Yes, but the whole point of Wero is that you don't have to type in a bunch of info that can be easily stolen. With Wero (and many other international solutions), you just scan a code with your phone, and your banking app handles the transactions. The existing legacy solutions are just duct tape on an existing system.

Hamuko• 2 months ago

This is pretty much every payment I do in Finland works. Always have to go and verify it using my online banking credentials after I've entered the numbers. Does make me wonder why I need to bother with the whole number, expiry and CVV bullshit anyway.

Tepix2• 2 months ago

The problem is that these are all US systems.

Spinfusor• 2 months ago

This is one of the reasons I opt for PayPal in the US when I have the choice. I've been in too many breaches. Direct to bank would be better, but I trust PayPal's security more than a random ecommerce website's security.

TheJoeMan2• 2 months ago

I caution PayPal would only work if you trusted the original shopping site, and perhaps your "credentials" got breached and used illicitly elsewhere. I got banned from PayPal after I tried to buy an electrical switch, was on an (apparently scam) website, never received the item, and opened a PayPal dispute. The scammer somehow convinced PayPal the item I tried to buy was illegal/against PayPal ToS, which resulted in them banning *me* instead of the scammer.

On the other hand, I see an unknown charge on my credit-card, dispute with my bank, and it's handled.

poody• 2 months ago

No way on PayPal,venmo, or any company associated with Paypal... I got screwed over with an unauthorized transaction on my credit card that was attached to a PayPal account... They refused to acknowledge the transaction as unauthorized... My Credit Card that was charged (Amex) on the otherhand, reversed the transaction within 24hours

IndianHandwash• 2 months ago

I'm annoyed by redirects that won't work if you set a different default browser or incognito mode as default for new tabs. Total BS.

Card numbers just work.

Also, payment "apps" that pack their own web engine and need 300-500 megs D/L, plus refuse to run on rooted / "unvetted" systems. No fucks given! Go away, give a browser and numbers.

djfdat• 2 months ago

Perfect opportunity for browser or OS API to provide the feature, where we could make it more streamlined, secure, and consistent.

jeroenhd12• 2 months ago

If you don't set a default browser, you'll be prompted what browser to open redirects and such in every time.

Unfortunately you still can't easily distinguish between normal browsing and private browsing that way (though browsers could implement that in theory), but I ran that setup for a while back when Firefox couldn't integrate with the App Tabs or whatever it's called where Android apps have their own minimal UI around a full screen web view (which used to always be Chrome).

Card numbers don't work because the business receiving the payment doesn't automatically get a signal from the bank when payments come in without an annoyingly complicated banking integration, which is exactly what these new services intend to solve. They do work for the consumer in some cases, and I have been paying for some online services with regular old bank transfers in cases where I didn't need a payment to go through the same day. That doesn't mean it's an equivalent system in most cases.

If your banking app doesn't run on your device because of something as silly as root detection, you should find a better bank.

hirako20002• 2 months ago

In fact a unique payment ID (e.g QR) to "push" payment is even safer. No redirect. That's how payment should be. Not an authorization given to pull from us, but the agency for us to push the amount.

Imustaskforhelp3• 2 months ago

If I am understanding you correct, isn't this what UPI does already?

gardenerik• 2 months ago

In fact, there is EPC code, but it is rarely used and bank support is abysmal, at least in our country. But that can also be because we have some homegrown local standard for payment QR codes (and a new one in the works, lol).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPC_QR_code

legends2k2• 2 months ago

This is exactly what India's UPI (Unified Payments Interface) works. No PII, just a UPI ID is given and the user gets a push notification in Android/iOS app for approval (with PIN or security enclave like fingerprint).

WhyNotHugo3• 2 months ago

We already have a unique payment system though: SEPA QRC. They include the IBAN and some payment details.

abdullahkhalids3• 2 months ago

Banks and Visa/Mastercard probably love that you fill out your CC details on an online store, and next time you can just 1-click pay. Probably causes a big jump in revenue/profit. That's why they never innovated much.

Of course, it is incorrect, and digital payments everywhere (on a kiosk or online) should be intentional pushes, not pulls.

akdev1l• 2 months ago

You could still have this 1-click experience with another system.

Like you could set some rule like “this vendor is approved for charges below $50”. We don’t need the legacy system for that.

(I don’t know if any payment systems can do that atm, just that if we wanted we could make them do that)

Visa seemed not to care too much about fraud though so at some level they do prefer ease of use over security

lxgr16• 2 months ago

I want many payments to be pull-based (at least I'd go crazy having to positively sign off every utility bill and subscription), but the ideal user interface for pull payments shows who exactly is pulling what, with a few days notice, and a one-click way to cancel any standing authorization.

zaphirplane• 2 months ago

The redirect to a bank is worrying, isn’t it trivial to fake redirecting to a fake bank ?

lxgr16• 2 months ago

Not really, since in modern 3DS implementations, the redirect pretty much only shows a modal saying "check your phone for a notification and confirm this payment there".

Worst case, you'll be entering a one-time code received out of band, e.g. via SMS, and that message will mention what you are consenting to by entering it anywhere, so even MITM attacks are very hard.

The days of entering a static password in 3DS are long gone.

antonkochubey2• 2 months ago

not really, the redirect itself is happening at EMV DS level, not by the merchant himself. Merchant has no idea what bank your card belongs to, so he does not know which bank to redirect you to.

tdrz• 2 months ago

You'll need to fake much more than just that. Usually the bank website will ask you to confirm the transaction by opening the banking app on your mobile phone.

WhyNotHugo3• 2 months ago

When I'm redirected to my bank, my bank shows my account name and some details (including a custom per-device avatar). Spoofing that would require gathering these small details.

Some banks have a custom device to scan a QR code, where the device generates a signing token but also shows the transaction details too. Regrettably, these are not too common, despite being the safest variant.

madradavid2• 2 months ago

Interestingly in a number of African Countries (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania etc) , we have “Mobile Money”, Payments are instant, via USSD, no internet required, I can even pay online using USSD push.This is a classical example of humans using what they have to build what they need , no fancy internet enabled smart phones required. I can send money anytime instantly to my grandma deep in the village. She can withdraw from or top up her account in the numerous mobile money stalls that are everywhere. You pay school dues, medical bills , groceries via mobile money. I don’t remember the last time I visited a bank, hell I can even get an instant loan by just dailing *165# on my no internet feature phone.

arbol• 2 months ago

Are you referring to m-pesa?

AdamN• 2 months ago

That's still a man in the middle coordinating the payments (mpesa, etc...) and essentially holding both sides of the transaction. When you send money to somebody with mobile money you're sending it to the mobile network operator who then let's the other person know so they can move the money to somebody else (or cashout or leave it there).

It's not really a federated system because you can't for instance send money from mpesa in kenya to a different provider in uganda.

dzonga2• 2 months ago

the mobile money while convenient r not exactly secure due to MITM.

flopsamjetsam• 2 months ago

For those wondering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstructured_Supplementary_Ser...

anilakar• 2 months ago

Most online merchants redirect me to my bank's web page when I enter my Visa credit card number. In theory it should be possible to have a card number that by itself is useless and always requires an external confirmation?

amoss• 2 months ago

with a mastercard from a swedish bank that is the experience that i get. all online transactions pop up a page from my back with qr code, this is authenticated through an app that shows me the transaction details and requires pin confirmation.

baq3• 2 months ago

there's the polish BLIK which is basically the same idea and there are probably a dozen more in other countries; need consolidation in this space tbh

CodesInChaos• 2 months ago

iDeal system, which in my opinion is the gold standard of how internet payment should work

Is it? I see it more as an underwhelming fix for SEPA Direct Debit's inability to verify payment data synchronously.

* iDeal doesn't support basic features like pre-authorization. I'm not even sure if it supports setting up a payment agreement without triggering an immediate payment at all (pretty sure it didn't, when we integrated it a couple of years ago).

* It hands over the customer's IBAN, which isn't really that much safer than a credit card number, since any merchant can trigger a SEPA Direct Debit using it. While you can trigger a chargeback, that requires you to actively monitor for fraudulent transactions, which a decent system wouldn't allow in the first place.

* iDeal recurring payments are SEPA Direct Debit, with all their downsides, like taking days to confirm and a payment that fails due to insufficient funds in the customer's bank account resulting in a significant fee the merchant has to pay (and will probably pass on to the customer).

And Wero has one of the worst, least informative websites I have ever seen. So it's really hard to figure out how it works, and what it supports.

hvb22• 2 months ago

It hands over the customer's IBAN, which isn't really that much safer than a credit card number, since any merchant can trigger a SEPA Direct Debit using it.

Yes. And they would quickly lose their ability to process any payments. This is the exact same idea as how credit cards work. I don't see my IBAN as a secret, all my friends have it, as thats how they can send me money right to my account.

that requires you to actively monitor for fraudulent transactions, which a decent system wouldn't allow in the first place.

So that rules out credit cards too, exact same system.

I'm not familiar with pix mentioned in the other threads, but I am not familiar with any other system that is better

gpvos10• 2 months ago

No. The bank gives you a prominent notification when someone new gets a direct debit authorization for your account. And a merchant gets banned quickly when they misuse their debit authorization.

trashb5• 2 months ago

pre-authorization

If you need pre-authorization use credit, iDeal is a debit system.

It hands over the customer's IBAN

SEPA Direct Debit requires my consent one time on my banking app.

Giving out your IBAN number is generally safer then giving out your Credit card number, date of expiration and cvv code.

Additionally it allows for things like name to account checking, therefore making it less likely you will be scammed.

csomar• 2 months ago

I was under the impression that direct debit requires an initial authorization from the account owner? Otherwise anyone with your bank account number can pull your account funds and bank account numbers are hardly a private information (unlike a cc where you need the card number/expiry/cvv code and generally a correct address)

GeoAtreides• 2 months ago

It hands over the customer's IBAN, which isn't really that much safer than a credit card number, since any merchant can trigger a SEPA Direct Debit using it.

this is not true. the IBAN alone is insufficient to authorize a direct debit.

stronglikedan2• 2 months ago

Instead, the payment should redirect me to my bank, where I authorize the payment through my own bank's security system.

That's basically Paypal and everyone still shits on them.

baq3• 2 months ago

paypal goes to great lengths to not be regulated as a bank, right?

swiftcoder3• 2 months ago

I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain about the actual PayPal payments flow. Most complaints are around seizing large balances due to suspected fraud...

gonzalohm• 2 months ago

How does the website know which bank to redirect to?

jorisw10• 2 months ago

A dropdown is offered and the choice is remembered.

ErrorNoBrain• 2 months ago

In Denmark i currently have to enter my card details but then, i get a popup where i have to enter my government issued ID username and scan a QR code from the related app (or enter from a 2fa token generator)

Its annoying - but it feels quite secure

pelasaco• 2 months ago

I shouldn't have to fill in any card numbers on the site of the merchant (which is unsafe). Instead, the payment should redirect me to my bank, where I authorize the payment through my own bank's security system.

To be honest with multiple banks in Germany, without Wero, works like that too..

rwke• 2 months ago

I recommend also have a look at how eCommerce is done in Chile, e.g. Transbank (WebPay), FinToc and others. Chile passed some very good FinTech legislation a few years ago.

bux932• 2 months ago

Wero is super confusing. They're in the business of acquiring different methods (I don't even know if they always buy them outright or if they merge or they are just associated in some way), branding them ALL wero, and announcing that every payment in every channel will be rolled out SOON via wero, without ever offering specifics.

So in The Netherlands wero is the new name of eCommerce payments, but in another country the new name for peer2peer. But no idea when p2p will launch in the Netherlands or when eCommerce will launch elsewhere. And if the existing services will be degraded when they are internationalized or merged.

jbverschoor3• 2 months ago

iDEAL is a killer name

tims332• 2 months ago

iDeal is terrible for fraud. Consumers have to file a police report.

vanviegen5• 2 months ago

Indeed, it's terrible for fraud, as fraudsters are more likely to land behind bars.

anal_reactor3• 2 months ago

Wero is basically an EU-wide version of the Dutch iDeal system, which in my opinion is the gold standard of how internet payment should work.

For some reason, most Dutch people are convinced that the way things work in the Netherlands is the gold standard of how things should work in general, and are very hostile to solutions from other countries even if those solutions are better by any sensible metric. This is especially painful when a less developed country does leaps around NL in some aspect, like:

1. In Poland, you don't need to carry any documents with you because if policeman stops you, he has access the police database anyway. This includes driving license.

2. Even if you really want to show a document, you can do it gasp on your phone screen with the official government app.

3. Albert Heijn, the most popular supermarket chain, started accepting Visa and MasterCard in 2023. Not in 2003, in fucking 2023.

4. The adoption of paczkomaty is pathetic and when you have a delivery the expectation is that you're supposed to sit and wait the entire day at home.

5. iDeal launched 2005. Przelewy24 launched in 2004. They function in exactly the same way.

vanviegen5• 2 months ago

/rant? :-)

1. sounds nice though! But how do they verify that it's actually you? Just matching the photo manually? People are terrible at that. Or do they scan a fingerprint?

gpvos10• 2 months ago

3. Yeah, the previous system we used was just too cheap and efficient. Credit cards are still not common.

4. We're indeed a bit later than elsewhere, but there are many now.

Arcanum-XIII• 2 months ago

In reply to .3: bancontact is nearly free per operation, but credit card were percentage heavy fee per transaction... That's why. And don't forget that the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg will prefer debit over credit for payment.

Don't forget that the banking world is still under a lot of pressure from the various government (systemic risk assessment for example) and the stakeholders. It's a mess!

positron262• 2 months ago

Making a note of this as an obvious technical alliance that should have existed for decades.

throw12345678912• 2 months ago

That’s how giro payments work. Same for Klarna.

jorisw10• 2 months ago

I'm just not sure this directly competes with MC/Visa the way the article suggests.

Didn't other EU countries already have something similar to iDEAL, as opposed to using credit cards? And now we're just consolidating them?

Also, isn't this just about online payments? Who's going to pay for a coffee with either Wero or a credit card? AFAIK most EU consumers use direct debit cards for in-store payments (those countries where cash is no longer popular), be it via Apple Pay / Google Pay or not. Many a card of which by the way is directly or indirectly powered by Visa or Mastercard.

At any rate, I don't see EuroPA or Wero break the 'hegemony' of Visa/MC the way this article claims.

vanviegen5• 2 months ago

At any rate, I don't see EuroPA or Wero break the 'hegemony' of Visa/MC the way this article claims.

You're right, it does not. But it's a significant step towards that goal. In-store payments are next on the agenda.

Vespasian• 2 months ago

As usual if there is reasonable competition this limits what the established actors can and will do.

efdee2• 2 months ago

I can only speak for my countries, but almost all payment terminals now have the option to scan a QR code with your mobile banking app to pay using Wero.

OptionOfT• 2 months ago

What about authentication?

I remember living in Belgium this was the case, and I always had to go and find that stupid physical barcode reader that I then had to hold against the screen, sign in with my debit card, PIN, enter the Euro amount, and then sign the transaction.

Now that I live in the USA, I have my credit card number in Bitwarden, with expiration date and CVC.

When I want to buy something, I let it autofill, and I don't have to verify and / or sign any transactions, bar high price ones (e.g. new $5k TV from Best Buy).

And in terms of security? It's a credit card. I review my statement every month. If I didn't make the purchase I call the fraud department and the charge is removed. Last time I did that they didn't even ask me questions.

I'd take Apple pay over the old(?) EU system.

locknitpicker2• 2 months ago

I remember living in Belgium this was the case, and I always had to go and find that stupid physical barcode reader that I then had to hold against the screen, sign in with my debit card, PIN, enter the Euro amount, and then sign the transaction.

I can't talk about Belgium but from what I've read, the dutch iDeal system requires nothing of the sort. It seems to act as a broker between your bank and the business, and a user's input is limited to pick the bank you use and approve the payment through your bank's app.

dalben• 2 months ago

The physical barcode reader is long gone in Belgium. Instead, you scan the QR code with your banking app (or on mobile, click a link to open the banking app), and either verify directly for amounts under €250 (?), or verify big amounts with ItsMe, another app, using Face ID.

smirnoff_s• 2 months ago

One thing that surprises me a lot is that in order to use Wero with my ING account, I have to give access to my contacts, which I ultimately am not going to do. I wonder how the European payment system can be so ignorant of their customers' privacy.

vanviegen5• 2 months ago

That has nothing to do with Wero, that's just your bank (ING) being stupid.

Arrowmaster2• 2 months ago

Yesterday I was renewing my vehicle registration through my US states website. They offered a range of payment options using embedded options on the site. The direct bank account option had the lowest fee but when I tried it I was immediately scared of the security. They used a 3rd party bank account transfer provider that asked me what bank I used and looked like it was going to prompt me for my login info before it errored out and I moved on.

Why can't the US have sane banking standards instead of this mess where you have to agree to a new 3rd party TOS and EULA for every purchase you want to make.

sandeepkd• 2 months ago

What you see is a glued or patchwork to make the things work somehow with the existing state of things. Strictly speaking, a lot of banks do not offer API support and yet these third party tools are able to orchestrate a flow with is nothing less than man-in-the-middle-attack.

The change if it happens at all, across the board to streamline can only from from government mandate. The industry is always going to go for finding some low cost option to achieve the target. The private players are always going to optimize for short term gains.

eastbayjake2• 2 months ago

When using a government website, you were intimidated by the security posture of... Plaid? (Genuine question, maybe this was some other provider but Plaid's aggregator tool is the most common place I see this pop up in real life for ACH)

ianburrell• 2 months ago

US should have sane transfers soon. The Federal Reserve developed FedNow which is instant bank transfers. It is more secure than ACH since it only does pushes and requests.

It takes time for banks to implement it. There is also conflict with Zelle that some banks developed. I don't think it is meant for buying things, but secure and fast replacement for ACH would be good enough.

oliwarner• 2 months ago

should redirect me to my bank

Eugh. The problem with that is that people don't verify they've actually been sent to their bank. An attacker will set up fake merchant sites, pay for Google ads to get your traffic, then have you log into your bank to pay for things.

The more we normalise this, the quicker people will fall for it.

efdee2• 2 months ago

If they haven't been redirected to their bank, verifying with their mobile banking app using a QR code will not work.

Fnoord6• 2 months ago

It works very good and user-friendly, but iDeal had a disadvantage: chargebacks aren't possible. Whether Wero has the same issue, I do not know.

intuxikated• 2 months ago

I thought it was an EU wide version of the belgian PayConiq

tedggh• 2 months ago

Providing credit cards online even by phone for 20 years I have never had any issues, or known anyone who had issues. The few occasions my cards were compromised (all my own fault): a restaurant in Vienna pre Covid when cash was king in Europe, I insisted to use the card and the waiter took it inside lol. Got a 4000k cruise booked a few weeks later. Another time at an ATM in Brazil, I even noticed the suspects around the machines waiting and still went for it. A gas station ATM in NYC. That’s about it. Every time I called the bank and they refunded the money. So what I’m saying is security doesn’t seen to be a big issue in the US when it comes to online transactions with credit cards. Of course this is all subjective from my own experiences, but I’m kind of reckless using cards so I’m probably a good test subject.

achogcha• 2 months ago

try getting a refund for fraudulent card charge in other countries except the US.... most other banks in LATAM/EU will not simply "refund" you the money.

adam_patarino• 2 months ago

Individual experience is rarely an accurate representation of the broader system.

anonzzzies• 2 months ago

But most people here don't want credit cards; risk of spending what you don't have just works differently over there outside mortgages. And then this new stuff is just objectively better: debit cards, even though you will get the money back mostly, makes it a hassle as you basically pay the lowest fees possible and never credit so fraud really sucks. And makes no sense; away with those cards; we do not need them anymore.

Bender• 2 months ago

Instead, the payment should redirect me to my bank, where I authorize the payment through my own bank's security system.

That is really cool. I would like to see that system in the US given that my bank has IP restrictions for my account. I would also like the ability to pre-approve specific vendors for specific amounts within each bank as a native service all banks should support.

brightball• 2 months ago

Does this work as a credit card system or for debit only?

WhyNotHugo3• 2 months ago

iDeal is superb and the most convenient payment method I've dealt with.

Wero claims that they won't support paying through a browser, and that it will be tied to either Google or Apple, which seems like a huge step back from iDeal in its currents state.

I wrote about this a few months back (including actual sources for their claims): https://whynothugo.nl/journal/2026/02/25/entrenching-america...

Shalomboy• 2 months ago

I'm legitimately curious how these American payment companies held onto their worldwide dominance for so long. I'm used to seeing the sign at restaurants of all the other cards they accept, but for so long I've only ever seen Amex, Discover, Visa, and Mastercard in folks' hands.

Keyframe2• 2 months ago

geopolitics, dollar, and then network effect. in that order.

lxgr16• 2 months ago

What bearing does the dollar have on any of this exactly?

whizzter• 2 months ago

Bank deals, especially in Europe where debit cards is more popular than credit the issuing banks preferred deals largely dictate what network you'll be on.

trashb5• 2 months ago

There is a huge first movers advantage on infrastructure.

Additionally until recently most political parties and people in the EU didn't see this as national security related infrastructure. That's why it was allowed to be privatized and handled by external companies. There is a lot more critical digital infrastructure that is being moved away from. Think Microsoft office suite, operating systems, cloud systems and more.

karel-3d2• 2 months ago

Amex is not very popular in Europe. Discover... I am not sure, not that much.

Visa and MasterCard are everywhere though

lxgr16• 2 months ago

Really depends on the country. Discover acceptance is actually relatively good globally, as they have interconnections to Diners Club, JCB and China UnionPay.

ravenstine2• 2 months ago

Based on my recent experience, Discover is spotty in Europe but some places definitely accept it. Not that great if you're on vacation and want to avoid hassle, though. Discover is my main driver (both credit and bank) in the US, but I decided to use a Visa card in Europe just to avoid random rejections. But you won't be screwed in western Europe if all you have is a Discover card.

deaton2• 2 months ago

Its simple: they have deals with all the big banks who issue the popular cards with all of the rewards, so those are the cards people get.

gordian-mind• 2 months ago

European tech is often atrocious. Every single digital government program in France has been hacked, every social security number is out there, physical addresses tied to crypto wallets, etc.

carlosjobim6• 2 months ago

It's very easy to understand: Paying by credit or debit card is incredibly easy and convenient for customers, and transactions have been instant for a long time, thanks to great technical infrastructure. While bank transfers still take days in some cases.

Most importantly: These cards give customers fraud protection, which is in many cases essential when making online purchases or when traveling. Which leads to more sales for sellers as well, when that worry is removed from the shoulders of customers.

baalimago• 2 months ago

Good! Now please remove dependency of alphabet + apple for bank apps, and we're golden.

0xbadcafebee• 2 months ago

Soon: "President Trump issued a new tariff today on all non-US payment systems, saying `We have the best protectionist economy in the world, it's really great`"

arpinum2• 2 months ago

This is the EU equivalent of Zelle, but pushing into merchant payments and owned and run by the banks.

When the telcos tried to compete with the cloud providers by offering OpenStack they learned the business wasn't as simple as offering 10-15 services with some racks. I can imagine the same hidden complexity for payment rails

On the other hand regulations have taken too much power away from merchants and Wero could succeed with more merchant friendly terms. They are doing 3-legged payments so they are not subject to as many European regulations as Visa/Mastercard.

chatmasta3• 2 months ago

UK Open Banking is a counter example to this argument. It’s been a huge success. Transfers between accounts are seamless, and I never need to authorize Plaid to maintain a permanent session in a headless Chromium instance reading my bank account. The APIs are well-defined, universally supported, and include authorization scopes for viewing balance, authorizing transfers, etc.

That said, I don’t do many p2p payments in the UK (mostly because I’m an adult now, not splitting every bill like I was in college). And I wouldn’t like to add every one of my friends to my banking transfer history. The UK is missing something like Venmo with wide adoption. I assume the kids these days mostly use features like Apple Cash or Monzo transfers.

arpinum2• 2 months ago

I have not heard about UK Open Banking rails for merchants being popular. You are talking about P2P? the article is about challenging Visa/Mastercard.

philipwhiuk2• 2 months ago

Sort of a success - people in the UK still ask for me for my account number and sort code.

throw12345678912• 2 months ago

We already have SEPA payments in the EU. The path has been paved.

MarceColl• 2 months ago

We already have instant SEPA payments and most countries already have a version of this running, I think the idea is that this unifies it across europe. I can send money to any friend in 20 seconds with Bizum in Spain and a lot of merchants also accept Bizum.

sammularczyk• 2 months ago

The banks will be fine. Australia implemented a similar system a while back (NPP/Osko) which is a standard adopted by 100+ banks. It was designed as a replacement for standard bank transfers which usually took a couple of days.

Now, even transfers in the tens of thousands move instantly. This was also a response to apps like Venmo potentially entering the market - now you can just pay to a phone number or email, as long as it’s been explicitly linked to a bank account. This is by far the preferred way to send money here and third party apps are not common.

They’ve also now introduced PayTo which manages debits and payments online with no fee. You simply approve the transaction in your bank’s app.

Australia also has widespread Visa and Mastercard use, but Eftpos has always existed - which is a fee free alternative around since the 1980s. It supports contactless, but that isn’t widespread due to weak international support and can only be used with debit cards.

The downside is that new features need to be implemented by each bank app, but it’s been interesting to see some of the smaller credit unions collaborating for example.

skrebbel• 2 months ago

I'd like to take this opportunity to share with you all that Wero is called Wero because Euro is pronounced "you-ro" and when you share your you-ro it becomes a we-ro.

CharlesW2• 2 months ago

And when anything goes wrong, that's a ruh-ro.

buf• 2 months ago

Internet comment of the day awarded to CharlesW.

esafak• 2 months ago

What's wrong with good old uh-oh??

irishcoffee• 2 months ago

When I give someone money I don't feel like I'm sharing it at all. Sounds like it goes from a "my-oh" to a "your-oh" and is aptly named from the jump.

jeroenhd12• 2 months ago

There's supposedly also an Italian pun based on "vero" in there.

I've heard pretty much every European English-as-a-second-language speaker pronounced the W differently, though, and pronunciation of the E isn't even consistent within native English populations. I can't wait for the "vee-ro? oh, you mean whay-ro" discussions between tourists and stores.

dgellow5• 2 months ago

It will for sure be pronounced Véro in French :)

Ouiro does sound pretty ridiculous to be honest

ragebol• 2 months ago

Never realized this, mind blown :-)

IshKebab• 2 months ago

Hmm Euro is actually pronounced roughly like yeuroh (like voyeur); not you-roh, and by the normal heuristics of English at least Wero would likely be pronounced more like weir-oh than wee-ro.

I guess it doesn't have to be perfect to make a funny name though.

wasabi991011• 2 months ago

Euro is pronounced "you-ro"

This in not true for everywhere that uses the Euro, unsurprisingly because that encompasses a large linguistic area. I know for a fact France doesn't pronounce it that way.

LelouBil4• 2 months ago

In France it's pronounced "uh row"

beAbU2• 2 months ago

How does France pronounce it?

DCKP• 2 months ago

Unless you're in Germany, when it's more like "oy-ro"... and Wero would be pronounced "ve-ro"... I don't think there's a German pun hiding here!

niccl• 2 months ago

Having associations with Aotearoa/NZ, I read it as w-eh-roh, which is part of the traditional Maori greeting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(M%C4%81ori)

Klaster_1• 2 months ago

Funny because euro is Greek ευρώ, which is pronounced ev-ro. The Cyrillic евро on notes is also pronounced the same.

nicholasbraker• 2 months ago

I thought crypto would have solved this ;-)

jasonlotito• 2 months ago

To be fair, crypto is anti-consumer.

And13• 2 months ago

Love to see it.

When Canada legalized weed in 2018, the US administration made it clear that they can ban Canadians from the US for life if they have used marijuana in the past. The administration alluded to looking at Canadian's transaction history to facilitate cracking down on this more harshly[1].

It was so clear at that point to me how badly sovereign payments and banking is so needed. FATCA is a thing, I get it, I get the motivation- but allow another country to wield a "cooperation" like a weapon to attack Canada's sovereignty is just further evidence that we need to safeguard our data.

[1] https://globalnews.ca/news/4461315/will-your-cannabis-credit...

kingleopold• 2 months ago

what until you understand what is next, cdbc and restricted digital money. Enjoy it.

Waterluvian4• 2 months ago

One silver lining of the current U.S. regime's behaviour is how it's forcing us to move out of the local minima of over-Americanization that we've been stuck in for too long.

chneu• 2 months ago

As an American, I'm so glad America is finally crumbling from its position of power. Americans need a wake up call because our insane hubris and stubbornness is responsible for so much of the bad stuff in the world.

1234letshaveatw5• 2 months ago

Does the same sentiment apply to TN1 visas? Funny how you never see those burned in protest

kvgr• 2 months ago

What makes you think EU will not look into it and block us from buying “bad things”?

llm_nerd2• 2 months ago

Do you think that is a retort in some way?

EU residents have a say over the EU. Canadians have a say over the Canadian government. We do not have a say over a nuclear-armed idiocracy forcing it's profound corruption and stupidity on other sovereign entities.

For instance right now the US, in defending their war-crime boss Israel, has sanctioned judges of the ICC, including Canadians, Europeans, etc. Any US firm enforcing such a sanction should be booted from operating in all of those countries. Which is precisely why Visa and Mastercard are soon going to be a busted, provincial, US-only concern. Well, maybe they'll have it in the great nation of Venezuela as well.

1234letshaveatw5• 2 months ago

Like American DUIs?

joenot443• 2 months ago

So now that 8 years have passed since that article was written, do you have any idea how many Canadians have been banned from the US for life because they used marijuana in the past?

credit card data can be stored in the United States, where it’s an open book to U.S. authorities, who don’t need a warrant to access it if it belongs to non-Americans
A U.S. border guard could quickly put a Canadian in an impossible position — admit to marijuana use and be banned for that, or deny it and be banned for lying

The mechanism in the article is border agents analyzing your credit card purchases to see if you've bought legal weed. Has this become a common procedure? I've passed the border 50+ times in the last few years, I haven't yet had it happen to me. I've never had them bring up cannabis once, they've always seemed much more concerned about when I was leaving.

I think when it comes to something as important as border operations, it doesn't really add much to the conversation to share fear-mongering pieces from 8 years ago.

And13• 2 months ago

This is a _very_ fair criticism and worth pointing out. I thought the piece wasn't particularly alarming and more just showing the opportunity exists, and cursory googles don't show any cases where it happened.

The problem I'm trying to point to is that we cooperate internationally because it benefits both countries or pushes towards a common goal- but when one of the cooperative speaks of turning that cooperation into a weapon, to me, makes it clear that the goal of the cooperation has changed.

morkalork2• 2 months ago

It was threatened and just because Canada called what turned out to be a bluff, doesn't make that threat magically go away. Next time, is it a bluff or threat the USA will follow through on? We shouldn't be in this position in the first place.

kimos2• 2 months ago

I worked at Shopify at the time this became legal and several provinces were launching on our platform. It was a monumental lift to get every single thing a transaction from these shops touches to only run on or through infrastructure on Canadian soil for this exact reason.

And13• 2 months ago

If you've written about this on a blog or elsewhere, I would be very interested in hearing more about this.

Can you say more here? Is this a payment gateway thing? I though if you used a visa/mastercard/etc that data is up for grabs by a foreign government, but if it's interac or some other payment method, does that ensure the data resides only in Canada?

tiffanyh• 2 months ago

Dumb question for those EU folks ...

How do you use this when paying online?

Is there the equivalent of an "Apple Pay" button on merchant website for those based in EU?

(Or a Pix button, when in Brazil, etc?)

hellweaver6662• 2 months ago

Go to store, select "pay by Wero". Get redirected to payment screen where I select my bank. My bank just shows a QR code that I scan with my bank app, authenticate the usual way, redirect back to store, job done.

NoLinkToMe• 2 months ago

Yes at the pay page there's a 'pay by X' list of options, you choose it.

You then typically have two choices: scan QR with your phone or login to your bank.

I normally open my bank app on my phone which signs in via my face (iPhone), I then press the scan button (first screen), point at my phone at the screen to read the QR code, the transaction pops up on my phone, I press confirm and again it signs via my face. Then you're done.

If you were shopping on the phone it's even simpler of course as the pay button opens up the transaction in your bank app right away, but typically I shop on my laptop after research.

I've had this for almost 20 years by the way in the Netherlands, but now it's pivoted to the EU standard.

bux932• 2 months ago

The merchant typically uses stripe or adyen or whatever (mollie has a cute name!), a payment service provider or PSP.

The PSP looks at what methods the merchant wants to accept, which methods the user could potentially be using (based on e.g. country by geo IP or some delivery location) and show the relevant icons.

EU users will see schemes like wero or Przelewy24, Japanese customers will see 'konbini' among the icons, and US users may only see credit cards, Apple Pay and Affirm. There are TONS of payment services. Stripe lists 123 of them.

The merchant will want to exclude methods that have high costs (for themselves), maybe they also care about their customers not getting into debt (so no buy-now-pay-later or credit), and some payment methods have higher rates of disputes/chargebacks (e.g. Amex).

In general, most merchants will want to offer as many methods as possible to prevent consumers who have a preference (this week) for using account A over account B from bouncing.

jbarber• 2 months ago

In Portugal there's often a "MB Way" payment option - which AFAICT is the PT version of these other systems.

dlisboa2• 2 months ago

A "Pay with PIX" button is just a QR code. You reach the payment page, the merchant website generates a QR code, you open up your bank app, scan the QR code, confirm the merchant and the purchase, the merchant website runs a spinner for like 10 seconds while it confirms it in the background, and then you get a confirmation of your purchase with an order number.

weezing• 2 months ago

With a code. https://www.blik.com/en/first-steps-with-blik

HunOL• 2 months ago

The title is definitely an over-exaggeration. "Goodbye" will happen when Europeans going abroad no longer need to take Visa or Mastercard cards with them.

What is currently happening is the solving of instant cross-border P2P transfers, which sounds like a very niche problem. Online payments are mostly a solved problem because payment gateways like Adyen or Stripe already support local payment systems.

hellweaver6662• 2 months ago

When we need that, we can use Apple/Android pay in many many places or just spin up a temporary visa/mastercard with platforms like Revolut.

izacus4• 2 months ago

Even if Visa/MC keep the fee on foreign spending, losing domestic spending will be a massive financial loss for them (and big gain for EU markets).

aarroyoc• 2 months ago

This is written from a French perspective as if southern countries joined later because they were not as developed. Quite the opposite. Spain, Italy and Portugal were in the first years of EPI, but they went there own ways because of the lack of progress that was being made by other members like France and Germany. Bizum in Spain is quite popular (I would say that more than Wero in France) and now is starting to manage payments in physical stores, after being a popular solution to transfer money between friends and in online payments (and in the physical black market).

iLoveOncall• 2 months ago

You must be very poor at reading French because the article says the exact opposite, and that Spain, Portugal, Italy and Andorra served as test subjects since they already have this system called EuroPA.

ta-run2• 2 months ago

If they can make it as seamless as UPI, that would be incredible. UPI, imo, is the pinnacle of ease of internet payments - as seamless and quick as it can get.

rafram2• 2 months ago

UPI would be even better if it were easier for tourists to onboard and use it while traveling in India. The general mindset seems to be that there's enough domestic tourism that making things easy for foreigners isn't that important. I think that really hurts the country's economy.

ta-run2• 2 months ago

My comment was more centered around the UX of UPI. But to address your point, there is a separate app for tourists called UPI One World, works as a digital wallet and the UX is similar.

legends2k2• 2 months ago

Yes, every user just gets a handle with no personal or bank info revealed and off you go. User keys in a UPI ID in any merchant site/app, get a push notification for approval in mobile app. Can associate multiple bank accounts to a UPI ID underneath. Approval will ask which account to debit from too. Can't get simpler than this.

chatmasta3• 2 months ago

Do Visa/Mastercard make much money in Europe? Most people use debit cards. I’m admittedly not clear on how exchange fees work for those.

AndroTux• 2 months ago

They make buttloads. Debit cards still require a cut for VISA/MasterCard.

lxgr16• 2 months ago

Debit cards have scheme fees and interchange rates just like credit cards. Interchange rates for credit and debit cards in the EU are actually very comparable and both very low, which is very different from many other parts of the world (e.g. in the US, debit interchange is effectively a flat fee per transaction).

Visa and Mastercard make money on scheme fees paid to them by both issuers and acquirers (i.e. indirectly merchants), not interchange.

There's an indirect impact of lower interchange rates, as issuers will usually not be willing to pay more than 100% of what they're earning in interchange in scheme fees. Acquirers have no such implicit limit, though.

eesmith2• 2 months ago

If it requires (or will require) Google/Apple authentication then it's of course not sovereign payment. It looks like Wero works on GrapheneOS, at least for now. Will that always be possible?

Will it always be smartphone only, or will there be other options?

I've read about the problems kids (eg, 10 year olds) are having in the countries which have gone mostly cash-free when they don't have a smartphone or debit card to use for otherwise normal and age-appropriate transactions.

I can't help but think that by switching even more of the economy to smartphone-based solutions then kids will have even more restricted purchasing autonomy.

To say nothing of people like me who don't have and don't want to have a smart phone.

ninalanyon2• 2 months ago

Norway passed a law quite recently forbidding permanent card only shops, cafes, etc. As far as I can tell this was done for two reasons, firstly card only is discriminatory and secondly to improve the countries resilience in the face of cyber attacks.

You can only be electronic payments only if you are a temporary sales location such as a flea market, ice cream van, etc.

eesmith2• 2 months ago

Oh, interesting! I read https://www.newsinenglish.no/2024/10/01/cash-cleared-for-a-c... and https://www.lifeinnorway.net/norway-strengthens-right-to-pay... .

The point of budgeting via "cash stuffing" instead of the invisible shuffling of money through a bank card, is something that in retrospect is something similar to what I did when I was younger - the cash in my wallet is getting low, so I should hold back on expenditures.

It lists some issues, like "The number of automated teller machines (called a minibank in Norwegian) has also declined, and most of them recently started charging a fee of NOK 10 (USD 1) to withdraw cash. If more people start using cash again, that may change."

Can you perhaps tell me how things have changed in the last couple of years?

trimethylpurine• 2 months ago

Please post in English. Chrome is unable to translate this page.

Arnt• 2 months ago

I tried Wero just now. Crashes at once on my phone.

I run Lineage is, want backups on my own NAS. I have a feeling that if I want this European payment app I need to accept backing up my data on an American cloud.

(I've nothing against Google really. But I want my backups at home.)

karel-3d2• 2 months ago

I am a European (Czech Republic) and I have never heard of any of those (Epis/Bizum/Vipps).

dgellow5• 2 months ago

They are generally country specific. But the underlying systems are made for interoperability. You might have an app with a different name in your country

pieterr• 2 months ago

Similar to PayU.

https://czech.payu.com/en/

kassner• 2 months ago

I wonder if at some point we’ll be start taking about non-smartphone sovereign payments. The main reason I still use card is to be able to use it without a phone, and the technology of debit cards (around Europe at least) is quite OK. Maybe Europe should have a parallel payment track that is just a new card brand.

tlogan2• 2 months ago

So this is basically the EU version of Zelle? Basically a way to transfer money between parties who already have established trust. Am I understanding that correctly?

But I am confused about how this relates to Visa and Mastercard. Those systems are used for payments between parties that have not necessarily established trust.

Ronsenshi• 2 months ago

It's a an all-in-one kind of system where you have p2p payments and traditional online payments (like what you would do when making payment for a product on some e-commerce shop).

Plus some additional features like payments through QR.

lxgr16• 2 months ago

So this is basically the EU version of Zelle?

Yes, but more importantly, it's essentially the EU version of Alipay (which can be used for merchant payments as well as P2P transactions).

P2P payments, specifically SEPA Instant bank transfers, have already been instant and free for several years now in the EU, so there's no need for a Zelle alternative (other than maybe for contact discovery without IBAN).

And speaking of Alipay: This is the actual global alternative to Visa and Mastercard that almost nobody in the west is talking about or even aware of. While it used to be mainly used by either inbound or outbound tourists in/from China, it now spans many countries and issuing and merchant banks all over the world, including many in Europe. Wero is many years behind in that regard.

mrb• 2 months ago

Yes Wero and Zelle are similar: real-time payment systems, where money is sent directly from bank account to bank account, and recipients are looked up with a convenient ID (a phone number, or an email).

tlogan2• 2 months ago

So why is this article talking about Visa and Mastercard?

These are two different use cases. I do not think anyone in their right mind is using Zelle to send money to a party they do not fully trust.

lxgr16• 2 months ago

That's a pretty optimistic take. I'm a bit more cautious myself: The motivation is obviously higher than ever, but it's hardly a done deal.

There are still many obstacles ahead: Contactless payments (Apple does not provide any card emulation NFC access to the Apple Watch, for example, and only limited access to iPhones), chargeback handling, offline payments (a recent priority of the EU under the larger umbrella of digital resiliency), and of course the network effect of the existing millions of terminals, ATMs, and cards in the field.

philipwhiuk2• 2 months ago

Apple does not provide any card emulation NFC access to the Apple Watch, for example, and only limited access to iPhones

It would be nice if we weren't also locked into American tech but that's a whole other ballgame.

SirMaster• 2 months ago

But does this act like a debit account?

What I like about a credit card are things like you are buying on credit, not using money in your account directly. So in the case of fraud or issue a chargeback it's been much easier to get credit card transactions reverted rather than get money put back into my debit account.

Also I like credit cards for the rewards, cash back or especially travel points. But also things like extended warranty coverage and other perks.

jungturk• 2 months ago

Also I like credit cards for the rewards, cash back or especially travel points. But also things like extended warranty coverage and other perks.

Much of this is funded by inflated interchange fees paid by merchants (and thus inflating the cost of goods for everyone). Ideally you would just pay for the added value you see (fraud protection, charge disputes, supplemental insurance) rather than those costs being externalized to other buyers.

gorbypark• 2 months ago

But does this act like a debit account?

Yeah, it's a debit account. I'm in Spain and use Bizum frequently. It's just a "pay from your bank account" system.

You mostly type in your phone number, get a notification (or text, depends on the bank) and open up your banking app and approve the transaction.

You can send money person to person as well.

Many European countries have a similar system. Wero is "just" stitching the national systems together into a EU wide one.

Credit cards with rewards and points are pretty rare in Europe, and if they do exist, pale in comparison to what you can get in the US/Canada. It depends on how you look at it, but it's kinda good. The EU caps credit card transaction fees at 0.3% and debit transactions at 0.2% iirc, versus in the US/Canada where they are frequently 2-3%. In theory this cost is just passed onto the consumer, so paying an extra 2-3% to get 2-3% back in points or whatever.

tialaramex2• 2 months ago

The nasty element of that reward situation, and why I am deeply in favour of the European choice here, is that while some people get nice rewards, some people just pay much higher prices and don't get rewards. So this actually worsens the divide between rich and poor to an extent, and that's just bad policy.

Tepix2• 2 months ago

Wero uses your existing debit account, it's not a separate account.

jorisw10• 2 months ago

This is where American and European mindsets differ vastly.

We spend what we have. Our spending is directly reflected in one’s balance. We’re insensitive to rewards for spending money.

ErneX• 2 months ago

This is spot on. I consider myself an outlier, but only since not long ago. I’ve been using a credit card for everything but only because it gets me points I can exchange for miles on some airlines or exchange for gift cards.

I wish the “old school” banks here were more competitive in this regard.

al_borland3• 2 months ago

What does this mean for travel if Visa is not “everywhere you want to be”?

I can’t tell if this is going to replace Visa/Mastercard or be offered in addition to Visa/Mastercard to handle transactions for locals while still allowing transactions to be viable for everyone else who might be passing through.

SomeUserName4324• 2 months ago

What does this mean for travel if Visa is not “everywhere you want to be”?

You'll live life as if you had AMEX instead.

carlosjobim6• 2 months ago

It means that businesses who accept cards will have a great advantage against businesses who think they are smart by making life difficult for customers.

Tehnix• 2 months ago

I don't see a way it wouldn't be offered in addition to. Some EU countries (e.g. Denmark) already do something similar where we a national debit card called "DanKort" (mashup of "Danmark" and "Kort" which translates to "Denmark" and "Card"). It typically also has a VISA part to it for usage abroad.

All stores accept this as well as VISA/Mastercard since they want to maximize who they can get money for, so it's already a common place practice for payment terminals to do this. Tourism alone is enough of a reason you would accept VISA/Mastercard still.

makeitdouble3• 2 months ago

I don't see a way it wouldn't be offered in addition to.

Yes, it will for most nation wide chains, touristic places, and anywhere that has comfortable margins.

For smaller shops and tighter business models, dropping the costlier networks will be the first thing they do. Same way a decent number of shops won't accept Amex, or just no card at all.

Now if we're is cheap and popular enough, there might be more stores getting rid of cash as a reaction.

iwontberude• 2 months ago

Crypto broskis have been selling so many bullshit coins for this specific moment in time and failed.

tdiff• 2 months ago

Just for context, it looks very much the same as Fast Payment System in Russia. Been a thing for some 10 years, and huge amount of retail works on it.

moralestapia4• 2 months ago

Canada chiming in, Interac rules above anything else.

kspacewalk2• 2 months ago

Interac should join this scheme outright or at least become interoperable with it. I'd love to be able to pay for everything on my trips to Europe without using US credit card networks.

moralestapia4• 2 months ago

Oof, that would be phenomenal!

deaton2• 2 months ago

As interesting as this is, it kinda sucks that on Android this is supposed to be locked behind DroidGuard, meaning that you are effectively still stuck with the duopoly unless you are willing to run an unmodified phone or microG happens to be winning the game of whack-a-mole that day.

dzonga2• 2 months ago

once again the crypto shills - r left exposed.

pix as already proven in Brazil - is faster. this system again will be faster & secure & more convenient with less fees.

cubbic2• 2 months ago

How does it compare to the digital euro, isn't it better?

cubbic2• 2 months ago

How does it compare to digital euro plan?

LelouBil4• 2 months ago

Digital euro has plans to be "cash-like" and have "private, offline payments", Wero is not aiming in this direction

dethos• 2 months ago

I really want this initiative to succeed. MBway a participant in it, is perhaps one of the most useful apps I ever had on my phone. Extending its functionality to all of Europe would be outstanding. Especially if I can then use it online on international websites.

throwaway132448• 2 months ago

It’s kind of wild seeing American soft power evaporate like this. I didn’t think it was the kind of thing that would happen in my lifetime.

cryptoegorophy• 2 months ago

Too bad cryptocurrency never took off. Such a missed opportunity

grey-area4• 2 months ago

Cryptocurrency didn't actually solve the problems we have, while introducing problems we didn't need to solve, because almost all of them copied Bitcoin. The only problems it solved well was for grifter politicians and criminals skirting financial regulations.

Note this transfer mechanism requires trust in your banking provider, is not pseudo-anonymous, is not decentralised, uses the banking system we already have and doesn't require a whole new 'currency' in order to transfer money.

jorisw10• 2 months ago

Can't be a missed opportunity if it never took off.

People know what they like/dislike, and crypto payments didn't cut it for whatever reasons. UX, cost, and waiting for blockchain confirmations come to mind.

Also what problems did it solve that we actually have? Without that, there's no incentive for change.

dheera• 2 months ago

When I click on a link, I expect information.

When I get blasted with this: https://i.imgur.com/oeGU3qd.png

I really don't know what to do. I can't read so much. Bounce.

Cider99862• 2 months ago

Adblockers solve this.

shmeeed• 2 months ago

Je n'accepte rien

h1fra• 2 months ago

I'll be happy when we get credit cards without a visa or mastercard logo

phplovesong• 2 months ago

Is there an english version of this?

dxetech• 2 months ago

Payments are much more complicated than just who your issuer is. As noted in other comments, connecting the customer directly to the aquirer can lose significant functionality. Pre authorization, installments, card on file and other typical services may be offered differently than expected, or not at all. In addition, Mastercard and Visa still write the rules for industry. If at some point advanced Mastercard or Visa 3ds security significantly reduce fraud, and thus rates, consumers may start paying more for issuers that dont support similar technologies. On top of all of this, point of interaction device support may lag. The latest features from Ignenico and such may take a while to implement, or again may not be supported at all for smaller financial companies.

All that being said, it’s great for consumers to have the choice, and hopefully we all benefit from increased competition.

Disclaimer: I work for a Payment Gateway

makeitdouble3• 2 months ago

installments, card on file and other typical services

These are typically cherished by the issuers and not really wanted/needed by the customer. Card installments in particular are the bane of our society IMHO and straight loans replace them properly.

Many banks in EU already had loan systems integrated to deal with oversized purchases and extraordinary months, so getting it out of the network doesn't remove the service to the customer in most cases.

We're kinda seeing this playing out with alternative payment systems in Asia for instance: they provide way less options, yet get very popular.because people just don't miss the extra stuff.

jfengel• 2 months ago

(In French.)

That could be a massive hassle for American tourists, who will still mostly have Visa and Mastercard. I'm sure that there will be some kind of solution -- I suspect Google Pay and Apple Pay will support the new network. But I'll have to keep an eye out.

I might even have to start bringing cash. I used to make that the very first thing I did on landing. The last few times I didn't get any cash at all.

tamirzb• 2 months ago

This is already an issue for tourists in many countries that have their own payment system (e.g. Brazil, India, Singapore, Thailand). In some of them you have companies that came up with products for tourists that allow them to pay but they usually come with fees. From what I know the majority of tourists in these countries just travel with cash.

senordevnyc• 2 months ago

I've never had a problem paying with cards in Singapore or Thailand, although it's been a few years since I've been to Thailand.

amunozo• 2 months ago

I had that issue in India and it was definitely annoying.

repparw2• 2 months ago

anecdotally, a lot of argentina's apps that have a similar system "had" to develop an interop with brazil's PIX as a feature, ideally an endgame would be for these systems (wero, pix, other countries') to all standardize and integrate each other. would love something like that.

carlosjobim6• 2 months ago

Cards are accepted everywhere in Brazil, including all foreign cards. For Thailand it used to be the same, and I doubt they have regressed.

makeitdouble3• 2 months ago

Those merchants will move to supporting more networks.

It's the same situation as Diners or Amex, they're supported wherever the merchant felt it made sense to go the extra mile. Touristic places typically pay attention to that.

carlosjobim6• 2 months ago

Businesses who cater to customers will still accept Visa and Mastercard. Probably along with the new payment systems.

But businesses which have their income from government grants or other non-customer sources can do what they want.

alsetmusic• 2 months ago

The damage this admin has done to the USA as a whole, so far, is astounding. It's good for Europe to decouple from the USA, but I'm sure the folks at Visa and Mastercard aren't thrilled.

tom13378902• 2 months ago

Thank you Trump - I guess?! It's great for Europe to wake up and for pointing out we need to decouple from the US and become more tech independent. It's bad enough that the whole world is financing the debt of the USA and every person therein. I hope, that in the long run, our democratic values and freedom will become more and more attractive. Especially when all other players become autocratic regimes. That is, if we realize this freedom is not a given and we are willing to put in the work.

Cider99862• 2 months ago

For hackers, Monero is the perfect digital payment system.

dewey3• 2 months ago

On paper, in practice it's delisted (At least in EU) from most exchanges like Kraken which makes it an extra hassle to get.

pgraf• 2 months ago

Wero uses AWS for their infrastructure... So much about their sovereignty focus.

Source(German): https://netzpolitik.org/2026/uneingeloestes-versprechen-auf-...

w4yai• 2 months ago

... for now

dewey3• 2 months ago

Being n% more sovereign is better than not at all. It’s not that hard to switch providers down the road, it’s not the gotcha that some people think that is.

TheMagicHorsey• 2 months ago

The UPI payment system in India seems to work really well. I'm not sure about the architecture exactly, but there seems to be a way to generate one-time passwords that you can use to pay people a fixed amount. E.g. you go to a website or store, and they display a QR code for payment, which contains the payment recipient information and amount of the charge. When you scan it, you are taken to your bank app where you authorize the recipeint and the amount, then you are given a special code in the form of a QR code or alphanumeric code. The person recieving the payment can scan the code to recieve payment ... or if you are online you can paste the alphanumeric code. No other information is exchanged. There's nothing that can compromise your ID or account info.

Pretty amazing!

Insane that a developing country has something so seemless, and meanwhile in the USA my credit card number is stolen online every 3 to 5 years, necessitating cancellations and in some cases (as with Chase) I had to close the entire account as they could not stop the fraud even after issuing 5 new cards over the space of 6 months--somehow the new card authorizations were being ported automatically into some subscription systems.

0x1ceb00da• 2 months ago

India had to get rid of cash and move virtually all transactions online to deal with the massive fake currency problem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH4TTuW_JcA

gpvos10• 2 months ago

Wero is for internet payments, but Visa and Mastercard are still involved for card payments. I just got a new-style Dutch debit card and it has a Mastercard logo on it; Visa cards are also still being given out.

lccerina2• 2 months ago

The idea is that merchants will ditch the card-pos in the long run. You scan a QR-code or send money through some app. Satispay does that in Italy and got massive rollout from stores because fees were pretty low also for smaller transfers, so no more "sorry, at least 5 euros to pay with card"

gpvos10• 2 months ago

Too bad you will be forced to use a phone then. I don't like having yet another single point of failure. But maybe by that time, the EU requirement to accept cash will have taken force.

throwaway20376• 2 months ago

Somewhat tangential: With advent of LLMs that are very good at translating European languages into English, I think it is great that people are submitting non-English content. I support it 100%. I hope that we see more of it. It will help to expand our "HN Universe" to include more languages and content.

dredmorbius• 2 months ago

Firefox's local-only (as in not remote-hosted) translation also does a remarkable job here.

fguerraz• 2 months ago

And then Apple pay and Google pay are not going to implement it, and nobody is going to use it.

tensor2• 2 months ago

Thankfully the EU is not against forcing these monopolies to support open markets.

dewey3• 2 months ago

Apple just had to open the NFC reader to alternative payment providers in the EU (Like PayPal) so what makes you think Apple Pay and Google Pay would be any different?

myko• 2 months ago

This is good for the world given the situation in the USA today. The folks in the US who voted for this will never understand how badly they fucked up.

sajithdilshan• 2 months ago

If it's p2p transfers why not just use SEPA instant transfers? As for online payments and POS payments, I don't even remember the last time I used a physical card. It's always been Apple pay and I really don't care which card is being used by Apple Pay

jorisw10• 2 months ago

A Wero payment is executed as a SEPA transfer. As an online store you don't want to ask customers to manually input a payment reference into a SEPA transfer. It's all about ease of use (and safety).

Avamander• 2 months ago

As an online store you don't want to ask customers to manually input a payment reference into a SEPA transfer. It's all about ease of use (and safety).

How? With a SEPA transfer I can actually see who I'm paying. With a CC or equivalent it's a lottery.

LelouBil4• 2 months ago

Wero started as Paylib [0], a French banks grouping used to provide phone number based payments between banks (and some banks also use it to provide NFC payments on android, instead of Google Wallet).

And also, Wero (unlike something like PayPal), is integrated in your bank's app, for (almost) all participating banks

[0] (Warning: French) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paylib

jorisw10• 2 months ago

I think the headline is misleading to the point of being childish.

It describes a consolidation of _online_ payment systems that are currently quite fragmented in the EU. It does nothing about in-store payments. Direct debit cards (10x as popular as credit cards in the EU) are often still MC/Visa powered, and the fastest way to pay contactless (even if that is via Apple Pay).

fooyc• 2 months ago

Online and in-store payments will follow in 2027, as per the article

jorisw10• 2 months ago

Understood. But even then it couldn't be easier than the contactless direct debit we already have.

FinnKuhn• 2 months ago

Only via QR codes as I understand. So no replacement for paying via Apple Watch or card.

tintor• 2 months ago

“balkanized” is offensive term

jorisw10• 2 months ago

I wasn't aware. It's meant to refer to every country having a different solution for the same thing, which in the EU is much the case.

That said I picked it up from Steve Jobs talking about cable networks in the US.

KerryJones• 2 months ago

I think this is misleading as a few other folks say -- otherwise you'd expect Visa/Mastercard stock to drop dramatically at losing that many folks in a single announcement.

svpk• 2 months ago

As far as different payment systems go I think gnu taler is the most compelling. If keeps the payer anonymous while letting the government know how much the payee received for tax purposes.

https://www.taler.net/en/index.html

injidup• 2 months ago

In Austria I'm always in the situation that shops and restaurants are unhappy that I pay by card because they claim that even a direct debit card cost them some large percentage through the terminal provider.

Will these new systems remove the middle man skimming that MasterCard/Visa has been doing to small businesses?

twoodfin• 2 months ago

If they really thought this was valueless skimming, why wouldn’t they just refuse to take these cards?

tom13378902• 2 months ago

Because customers like the cards. Not restaurants. And customer is king. There are few businesses who do not accept it. Some hair dressers, some alternative bars, etc.

asdfman123• 2 months ago

We've lost so much American soft power for no discernible benefit whatsoever.

When you release a bull in a china shop all you end up with is a lot of broken china, extensive cleanup work, and a steep bill.

jmyeet• 2 months ago

We're entering an era of "tech nationalism". China has been completely vindicated for esssentially not allowing their country and economy to be held hostage to foreign tech companies. It would be an era of "tech colonialism". Look into the century of humiliation, gunboat diplomacy, the opium wars, etc and see why China might not be on board for that.

Europe collectively is a US vassal state, not just in tech. As an example, if someone in Switzerland Venmos someone in the Netherland with a description of "Cuba" or even "Cuban" (sandwich), the payment could be delayed or you could be banned entirely [1]. Why should a payment between two Europeans in Europe be entangled with US sanctions?

The danger here for European "tech emancipation" is that the US government will get involved and fight the fights for US companies. The United Fruit Company was the poster child for this where the US deposed the Guatemalan government in 1954 and the 60+ years of Cuban sanctions are basically because the UFC was cheating on Cuban taxes.

Brazil's Pix (IMHO) will come under the pressure of this on behalf of Visa/Mastercard that may include trade retaliation and other forms of pressure and the US government will argue that Pix is "illegally" subsidized by the government. Europe's payment systems will face the same attacks.

[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/matthewzeitlin/be-caref...

tensor2• 2 months ago

The ship has already sailed and the US is simply refusing to recognize it. Yes, in the short term there will be tantrums thrown and threats made, but it won't prevent the middle powers from diversifying away from the US.

locallost• 2 months ago

The report of my demise was greatly exaggerated.

I see 10 people in my address book that I could theoretically send money via Wero. Hundreds of people in my address book have a Visa or a MasterCard. It's not a bad thing to have competition and ambition, but to say goodbye is premature to say the least. Online payments especially between regular people (so not businesses) are still dominated by PayPal. And even online shopping is dominated by PayPal although Apple and Google Pay are taking a bigger slice because it's just so convenient. And they're just again using Visa and MasterCard.

I'm not sure Wero was developed to be very practical. I registered with my phone number, but now have second thoughts because I don't want to give my phone number to strangers when buying on second hand marketplaces. But guess what - you cannot change it. You cannot register a second number. It just feels very rigid in its design.

There were other systems already that were supposed to do the same. Girocard/EC... All dead and buried now.

Fokamul4• 2 months ago

It's only available in 3 countries in EU. Great. But classic slowness of EU, it should be in whole EU yesterday. With manadatory Euro.

shevy-java• 2 months ago

Good. Now the same has to happen for the software industry.

Unfortunately EU officials also can not be trusted. They are indeed weak. So we all know in the long run, the USA always gets favourable deals and Europans are kept as proxy-payers here. Germany in particular has a very unhealthy love affair going with the USA; to some extent this is understandable due to an export-centric industry, but now there is a recession and Germany still thinks it'll go away soon, "just don't change anything". Timid rabbits, with Merz being the uber-rabbit that just does nothing useful on his own. Other than risking being a loudmouth before he was elected - and now germans are very unhappy with his performance.

kadomony• 2 months ago

This explains why they were in China pushing for them to open up the market to them. They're nearly bleeding all of Europe.

scirob• 2 months ago

Idk n26 still not integrated. Twint in Switzerland has amazing penetration can pay at any terminal with qr code

Fokamul4• 2 months ago

Yeah, thanks no thanks.

Wero is owned by the banks from worst EU countries - Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands.

In my country, we call them New Middle East.

Yeah, no way I would support this in my business.

They will ban you for things they don't "like" in their countries.

Like free speech, gun manufacturing and exporting to Ukraine.

Being anti illegal immigrants etc.

(legal immigrants are great, like Ukranians, Belarusians, even Russians if they burn their passport, haha)

dormento7• 2 months ago

Like free speech, gun manufacturing and exporting to Ukraine.

"Free-speech' discussions aside, they're banning you from "manufacturing" and "exporting" TO Ukraine? This war is becoming very complicated.

Giorgi• 2 months ago

Oh, it is monthly paid Wero ad.

throwawayaltepi• 2 months ago

(throwaway alt because main is traceable)

epi acquired idealo (in the Netherlands, and payconiq in Belgium/Luxembourg), slapped the wero brand on it, and announced proudly they have x million customers.

wero as a brand has close to 0 market recognition, and with idealo and payconiq they butchered some of the systems (in the name of consolidation) so badly that incidents have become the norm (and security wise ...yikes!).

Worth mentioning that epi is just the latest attempt at a pan-European payment system, the previous attempts, the Monnet project and PEPSI, failed miserably after wasting billions (tens of billions?) and ...it doesn't repeat, it rhymes.

I wish we could replace visa/mastercard but epi is absolutely not the solution, imho.

doctorpangloss• 2 months ago

epi is absolutely not the solution, imho.

pray tell, why? why is X not a solution and Stripe is haha

won't someone please think of Stripe common holders!

raelmiu• 2 months ago

Aaaaaahahahahahahaha, sure they are. Sure.

jansenmac• 2 months ago

I think it is a good initiative and a needed step in EU integration. I do think it is remarkable to frame this as a move towards more sovereignty. More EU integration has traditionally always been framed as giving up sovereignty by the member states. Now it is the other way around - thanks to the United States.

morkalork2• 2 months ago

Free the nipple! Will it be the alternative to visa/mastercard dictating only puritanical usage of their payment systems?

BXLE_1-1-BitIs1• 2 months ago

Trump sanctions against ICC members and at least one human rights rapporteur has effectively debanked these people and made it very difficult for them to travel.

Protecting Rule of International Law against Rule of Trump Ukazi has become necessary.

casey2• 2 months ago

Maybe visa and mastercard will stop bulling Americans now that they are the only customer base... Who am I kidding. They will become much worse.

greatgib• 2 months ago

In my opinion, Wero is harmful and the comparison with Visa and Mastercard is moot.

Wero is not and will not be a card network will all its features so not a real competitor.

Also, currently the perfect alternative for european is instant transferts (and openbanking) that was imposed by EU to banks. That is the working quite well and the equivalent to Pix in my opinion.

But, especially for OpenBanking, european banks have done everything to block open systems like that, that gives more control to consumers.

So, here comes Wero, the goal is for the most awful legacy Europeans banks to create a new monopoly under their control. They use the "instant transfer" network, they sugar coat that with a proprietary stack to match phone number/emails with iban accounts and to give each other a few exemptions of 2 factors confirmations and so. But access to the network and protocols will be secret and kept for themselves to prevent fintech and competitors to disrupt their grip on consumer money spendings.

If you look at it, Wero is not an innovative stack, it is the usual java shit that you find in the old banks. The kind that make your bank app a real pain in the ass with stupid limitations.

snvzz• 2 months ago

Good riddance.

luplex• 2 months ago

Wero's messaging is so confusing. It's so many different things at the same time. In short: Wero is a brand name for a collection of payment services. They are merging multiple European alternatives, like Spain's Bizum and the Netherlands' IDeal. These mergers are in various stages, so what exactly "Wero" can do depends on: - your bank - your country

Wero-proper (like it is in Germany, not a rebrand of a pre-existing system) currently supports peer-to-peer payments via SEPA instant transfer, using a centralized phone number <> IBAN lookup server.

Wero also supports online e-commerce payments (with buyer's protection similar to credit cards, managed by the customer's bank). But not all banks that support Wero p2p also support Wero E-commerce. If your payments run on e.g. Stripe, you can enable Wero for all participating banks. Wero is cheaper than credit card payments.

Some time next year, Wero will offer in-store point-of-sale (POS) payments. Afaik, those are not live anywhere yet.

I think with all the mergers with established systems, the chance of success is really high.

Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment

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