Wero – Digital payment wallet, made in Europe

From what I've gathered, they've decided to make this completely unusable without a Google- or Apple-approved smartphone. Horrible! Are individual banks even allowed to make that an option for clients? Though even if they are, I doubt any will.

I would LOVE a PayPal alternative, but this is just not it.

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From https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599074240...:

> It is not possible to use Wero via a web browser or on a computer.

Can anyone explain me exactly why it is a suitable alternative to VISA and Mastercard (and why people were waiting for it). I am trying to understand the full picture here, so multiple things come to my mind.

First, SEPA instant payments already exist and are really instant up to a certain amount, and I am guessing that Wero builds on top of that a sort of identity layer, to sidestep the whole IBAN thing. But it is likely more than a SEPA alias, since it was supposedly hard to set-up.

Second, VISA and Mastercard are worldwide payment networks (or rather, they each operate payment networks with various names?). But I am failing to grasp what's hard to reproduce here too. I heard that in Europe there were only a few national alternatives, like Carte Bancaire or Girocard, but why? Is it just because banks can't agree on the design of an alternate network? But all the fees associated with using VISA or Mastercard should be a big enough incentive to push something else. (basically what's a payment network?)

And lastly, why are all the new (free) digital banks (néobanques as we call them here) relying on either Mastercard or VISA and never on Carte Bancaire for example, while it generally offers lower processing fees (and that they can be cobranded).

I think I am missing a lot of context, and I asked LLMs a while ago about these but themselves don't really explain what is the infrastructure needed to operate such a network.

There is Taler already https://www.taler.net/

I think this press release adds much needed context: https://epicompany.eu/media-insights/bancomat-bizum-epi-sibs...

Especially these parts:

> The cooperation builds on the success of existing solutions, connecting them via a central hub to create a truly pan-European experience for cross-border payments.

> European consumers will continue using their current preferred solution, now with broader European reach

> The cooperation is based on a central interoperability hub, operated by a future central entity jointly established by the partners.

So it is unlikely that Wero will be the single solution for entire Europe. Instead it is one of many solutions that hopefully will interoperate in the future. But we are still in the MoU phase only, so lets see what happens...

Europe? It's available only in Germany, Belgium and France. That are IN Europe but are not THE Europe.

https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/37991694065...

I hope we'll get there soon.

I think it's important to note—which isn't mentioned on their website at all, stupidly enough—that wero has two parts. The p2p payment, that you can see in the parent article. And the e-commerce functionality, which is based on the dutch iDeal. See https://sowieso.wero-wallet.eu/nl-en/

Kinda odd that their marketing does nothing to clarify this...

Fyi, Wero only supports three countries: Belgium, France, and Germany.

At first glance this seems similar to swish, but for a different part of Europe. Is it?

I wonder if there will be interoperability between them, that would be pretty sweet

Iirc many countries decided to not participate in this. Does anyone know why?

I really hope we can get Wero cards at some point. I don't like my ability to pay for things to depend on my phone's battery.

It’s not like this issue had been solved like… what… 15 freaking years ago in China.

The fact that this is shown as a « big step forward » is a a great example of how much the EU is lagging behind. It’s honestly quite sad.

Anyway, let’s wait and see, I already used Wero, it works OK, I don’t really get what the difference is between this and instant bank transfers but again, let’s wait and see.

Speaking of payment methods, anyone else noticed that Pcbway stopped accepting credit cards? What is going on?

It disgusts me that there's no consumer protection law against 'if you want to use our service you must have an Android or iPhone'. Blue Bikes (rental bicycles) also have this problem and there it's possibly even worse because they used to have a card.

would be cool if they'd also only be using Europe tools for hosting but so far I've seen Atlassian Statuspage, Zendesk, Google Tag Manager, HubSpot, Matomo Cloud (which uses AWS), Digital Ocean and Google Ads.

The problems with Wero is that it needs a linked phone number and nobody can answer what happens if you link two bank accounts from different banks to the same phone number (is this even supported? Why do I NEED to link my phone number?). Also, every bank needs to manually support Wero and when you want to pay online you need to scan a QR code with your phone (yes even on your desktop) and approve it inside your banking app which makes it way slower than just using PayPal or Google/Apple Pay. It's astounding how EU bureaucrats came up with "PayPal but worse" over 25 years after PayPal was founded.

I wish you the best of luck! Let me know when it works in all the countries where VISA is available so I can switch to this solution!

Every once in a while, I check it out, and every time I am confused or disappointed.

Don't we already have SEPA transfers? What benefits would this add? Why are they completely unable to pitch it to someone who's curious and receptive to the idea?

Related:

https://werotracker.eu/

Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46958399 - February 2026 (1020 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46963089 (Wero subthread)

Made in Europe, requires a smartphone controlled by US corporations violating DSA laws.. great.