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.
Hell even the homeless people around here take donations in PIX, but you can also buy a house with it. Zero fees involved
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.
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.
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.
They are now hesitantly joining Wero, supporting it only to downplay and to lobby ECB for an API platform and not for a product.
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...
In fact, you can pay a Tikkie using iDEAL/Wero
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).
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.
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
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.
this is not true. the IBAN alone is insufficient to authorize a direct debit.
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.
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.
It’s a shame that this system isn’t ubiquitous for the rest of us not in EU.
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.
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.
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.
You're right, it does not. But it's a significant step towards that goal. In-store payments are next on the agenda.
Of course, it is incorrect, and digital payments everywhere (on a kiosk or online) should be intentional pushes, not pulls.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
Its annoying - but it feels quite secure
On the other hand, I see an unknown charge on my credit-card, dispute with my bank, and it's handled.
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.
That's basically Paypal and everyone still shits on them.
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.
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.
To be honest with multiple banks in Germany, without Wero, works like that too..
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.
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!
4. We're indeed a bit later than elsewhere, but there are many now.
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?
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.
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.
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.
“Payments via Zoosha? K-smog and Batboy launch new startup.”
so true. those names are silly. also, French and Spanish can already send money for free via IBAN / SEPA
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...
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Ouiro does sound pretty ridiculous to be honest
I guess it doesn't have to be perfect to make a funny name though.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Source(German): https://netzpolitik.org/2026/uneingeloestes-versprechen-auf-...
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.
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...).
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/
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.
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?
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
It's not like it's that difficult to implement. Most Brazilian banks implemented a similar protocol in months.
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.
Visa and MasterCard are everywhere though
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.
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.
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.
But businesses which have their income from government grants or other non-customer sources can do what they want.
And even those of us who have activated it, have hardly used it for the most part, or hve concerns.
Do we need a pan-EU standard? I'm actually not so sure, but yes it would be nice when traveling.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
You'll live life as if you had AMEX instead.
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.
pray tell, why? why is X not a solution and Stripe is haha
won't someone please think of Stripe common holders!
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.
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.
It would be nice if we weren't also locked into American tech but that's a whole other ballgame.
Europe needs to be functionally as independent as possible.
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.
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.
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.
We spend what we have. Our spending is directly reflected in one’s balance. We’re insensitive to rewards for spending money.
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.
> 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.
Europe: <launches European payment initiative>
America: NOT LIKE THAT!!!
> “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.
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.
This whole "new" ecosystem is just gluing together existing national digital payment solutions so it can be used internationally.
Will these new systems remove the middle man skimming that MasterCard/Visa has been doing to small businesses?
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.
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.
Plus some additional features like payments through QR.
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.
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?)
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.
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.
I suppose some added sovereignty is to be expected when your closest ally extorts, threatens annexation and slams you with tariffs.
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...
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
You can only be electronic payments only if you are a temporary sales location such as a flea market, ice cream van, etc.
Protecting Rule of International Law against Rule of Trump Ukazi has become necessary.
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.
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)
"Free-speech' discussions aside, they're banning you from "manufacturing" and "exporting" TO Ukraine? This war is becoming very complicated.
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.
pix as already proven in Brazil - is faster. this system again will be faster & secure & more convenient with less fees.
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.
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.
