alt Hacker NewsGoodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment
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> 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.
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...
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Too bad cryptocurrency never took off. Such a missed opportunity
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.
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.
Too bad that, for Italy, BancomatPay joined instead of Satispay, an app that's actually used (especially in the North). Almost nobody uses BancomatPay.
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.
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.
Equivalent PIX is very popular in Brazil for instant payments.
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.
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.
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.
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.
How does it compare to the digital euro, isn't it better?
Maybe the original source that the current article links to is a better link: https://epicompany.eu/media-insights/bancomat-bizum-epi-sibs...
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.
How does it compare to digital euro plan?
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.
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?)
Source was posted back in February: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46861789
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.
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.
Good! Now please remove dependency of alphabet + apple for bank apps, and we're golden.
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.
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.
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`"
I am a European (Czech Republic) and I have never heard of any of those (Epis/Bizum/Vipps).
Please post in English. Chrome is unable to translate this page.
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.
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.
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.
Crypto broskis have been selling so many bullshit coins for this specific moment in time and failed.
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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.