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