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.
That sounds worse to be honest. You're essentially asking for the government to be not only aware of but also able to control all digital payments. That upends how money has worked over (literally) millenia, and is an incredible risk to take. Giving someone in government the ability to block someone's payments and trusting they won't abuse it might be fine as long as good people remain in power, but do you really want to bet the entire nation's ability to live life on that?
Furthermore, wouldn't determining if a payment is legal require prying into details of the transaction that may violate your privacy? And if they make an incorrect determination based on stuff that really wasn't their business in the first place, they now have the force of government behind them, going far beyond merely declining the transaction.
I would think what you should want to advocate for is a system that cannot block payments (at least domestically) just like with cash, and enforcement either happens prior to enrollment, or after the fact through some other traditional law enforcement mechanism (warrants, etc.).
Which yes means sometimes legit transactions that match rules meant to catch money laundering and other shady business get blocked or flagged. Sometimes out of avoidance of legal risk, rather than actual certainly anything illegal is happening.
I don't know if the centralized government implementation would be any better in that regard, but at least you could complain to the government instead of having a bank hide behind a law they didn't write but have to enforce.
In EU, Czechia. Foreign(french lol) banks are banning accounts because you work in gun manufacturing industry. In EU. When 2 countries from you, there is a FCKIN' war happening.
Only because France, Germany, UK and similar countries are against guns and against self-defense, where your only option is to lay on the ground and let the attacker kill you.
Luckily we can still use guns for self-defense, we can conceal carry by default and we will fight EU laws till our death for this.
(pepper sprays, knives and even katana, whatever)
EU Brusel is trying very hard to force these idiotic laws to every country.
Eg.: they forced limited mags for rifles.
We have bypassed that with local law haha, when you get a gun permit (which is not easy, but not impossible) you just fill a paper with "a gun buy order" for the police and you are automatically (by law) allowed to have unlimited magazine, silencer and special JHP ammo. Reason self-defense and defense of your property (default reason, police will only check same thing they've checked for gun permit. Your criminal record).
And also luckily we don't need to use anything, because our criminality is a liiiiitle bit lower than France, Germany and UK. You know why.
But tide is changing, Poland will be biggest economy in EU in few years and their gun laws are also changing and we have a lot of common with them.
I believe together with other reasonable countries (Slovakia, Hungary etc.) We will overturn this idiocy comming from France, Germany and other "west" countries.
Btw I'm for EU, even for federalization of EU. But with an US approach. EU should be no.1 country, yes country, in the world.
That shouldn't be happening. French banks on Czech soil should operate under Czech, not French laws. Otherwise the Czech banking authorities should go after them. Something is fishy about that.
Also, which banks do French citizens working in the arms industry use if they're not allowed to? This is all very bizarre.
That is what government is for in a functioning democracy. A functioning government is of the people for the people.
American media may be less likely to share that narrative with you. But the actual people figured this out a while ago and they're mad.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48100358
Edit: wow, my bad. HN really loves low effort nationalistic slurs as entire comments now.
Tin my observation the main advantage of swiss system is the institution of the referendum.
It means that every major decision is decided by the people. The elected government decides on the 99.9% other issues.
The consequence of this system is that absolute majority of public discourse focuses on the issues and problems and not party affiliation.
So e.g. the most consequential election isn't the one where you have to choose the guy who will make everything great again, but e.g. the referendum if the country should spend billions over the next decades on the new tunnel under alps instead of other infrastructure projects.
You can't just ramrod a cultural output into other cultures and expect it to work or even expect different voting demographics who might have individually accepted direct democracy to continue to do so once put in a more diverse country. They tried democracy in Somalia and it worked worse by most measured metrics (including economic) than the xeer system of tribal hearings and decentralized governance for which their culture had adapted.
But it's not the consequence of the skin color or the neutrality. All European countries have been practically 100% white until not long ago with vastly different outcomes.
I think the results have been pretty consistent that out of places 90+% euro-white voters in direct democracy and relatively neutral in WWII performed well (Lichtenstein was neutral in WWII too).
>But it's not the consequence of the skin color or the neutrality
Lets not pretend we're referring to the actual melanin in skin jumping out and doing something. No one thinks an albino kid of black parents is suddenly going to think like a Swiss voter.
I do, too. I’m not sure I trust Brussels.
> A French court convicted the head of the International Monetary Fund and former government minister, who had faced a €15,000 (£12,600) fine and up to a year in prison. But it decided she should not be punished and that the conviction would not constitute a criminal record. On Monday evening the IMF gave her its full support.
> The verdict came as a surprise as even the public prosecutor had admitted the evidence against Lagarde was “weak” during a five-day trial last week. Jean-Claude Marin told the court Lagarde’s actions fell into the category of politics and not criminality and called for her to be acquitted.
If the public prosecutor admits the evidence is weak, then I take that at face value. I'm open to evidence of the contrary, but without such, I just have to assume the case was weak.
It does strike me as odd that she was convicted. I suppose the evidence wasn't negligible.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Lagarde#Conviction_o...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/19/christine-laga...
I agree: The comment from the public prosecutor is excellent. To me that is a very strong sign of a well-balanced, highly functioning democracy (and its legal system).
Donald Trump, convicted (pardoned everyone who attempted a coup on Jan 6 2021).
Victor Orban, surely he'll get convicted.
Benjamin N., Vladimir P.: wanted by ICC.
(This excludes cases like Jan Maršálek / Wirecard fraud / GRU spy. Also, have a peak at all the cleaning Zelenski's government had to do, including in his inner circle.)
Seems we in Europe at least are attempting to uphold the rule of law. I can't say the same for US corporations or US government, given the current administration. That being said... can we stop voting for these narcissistic criminals? Thank you in advance.
If you ever had your account blocked by Apple or Google, you know exactly why a government is the better option. At least you have the rule of law on your side.
Big companies are the authoritarian situation, not the government.
Yes, I'm aware someone is trying to undermine it in the U.S. currently. That doesn't mean that companies are a safe haven suddenly.
If the government has to enforce banking KYC/AML itself they won't be able to hide behind all the third party fuck-fuck games and they'll get sued into oblivion. I'm sure they'll play the normal federal court and sovereign fuck-fuck games but it would be glorious trying to watch them try to enforce the BSA and Patriot act bullshit while not being able to hide behind the auspice it's just a private bank collecting the data.
There are exactly two companies in the global credit card market and they operate in lockstep, literally coming to agreements to shut down legal businesses together. Visa and MasterCard have absolutely no right to determine who is and isn't allowed to receive payment. Governments have that right, but that doesn't mean they should use it -- if they're abusing that right, people can vote them out. The effectiveness of people voting out harmful politicians is another matter, but that's kind of on the people being bad at voting, not the idea of government altogether, and at any rate you have no vote whatsoever in what MC/Visa do (unless you vote for government to regulate them!).
This is wrong for a large share of the companies that most people deal with on a daily basis. And that share has been steadily increasing every single year.
But I agree with your meaning. We are beholden to some third party no matter how we move in the current situation.
Hopefully the acquisition of Discover by Capital One results in lower processing fees so the network broadens globally and makes the notion that Discover isn't viable a thing of the past.
Is it possible to get a UnionPay (China) or JCB (Japan) credit card issued by a European bank? That would be very interesting. I assume in the last 10 years, there is way more acceptance of UnionPay in Europe. UnionPay is widely accepted all over East and South East Asia these days because there are so many Chinese tourists.
I also wouldn’t say either of those is particularly better than Visa/Mastercard. They all engage in the same practices more or less
[Edit] -- And I've frequented several independent coffee shops that are cashless.
Not that central bank won't be able to do the same, but it would have to follow laws set by the government rather than law+whatever the card companies decide to.
Also with the government option it wouldn’t mean that you can’t still use other methods - for example in brasil credit card or cash work just fine, PIX is just one (very convenient) option.
The only exception I have found to consistently refuse PIX are some parking lots, and they refuse credit cards as well, accepting only cash, probably to hide their earnings.
Also: What is PIX uptake/penetration like in the countryside? China is shocking how fast that countryside wet/farmer's markets started accepting AliPay. Literally, you can buy a kilo of pumpkin (namguo) using nothing but your mobile phone with AliPay, and the old lady running the stand (in a wet market) probably has a 6th grade education. (No hate on that!)
Oh yeah?
Please enlihhten me, how exactly can I switch providers from the Visa/Mastercard duopoly?
It's a shit situation we're in, but the ECB seems like the lesser evil.
Also Western and Eastern are just labels in this context, not opposite directions, even if Brazil was “not Western” in some way, it wouldn’t make sense to call it Eastern.
On the West of every single country in Europe, to start with.
Don't take this the wrong way, but have you looked at a world map? I ask since a significant chunk of people from the US cannot find Mexico on a map ...
Aside from its very evident geographic location, Brazil was the site of the first lasting European colony in the Americas established by Portugal.
People in Brazil speak Portuguese[1], a Romance language derived from Latin and closely related to Spanish, French and Italian.
The genetic lineages most commonly found within the Brazilian population include Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, German, and to a much lesser degree but still significant, Lebanese and Turkish [2].
The top countries whose citizens visit Brazil as tourists are overwhelmingly from the Americas and Europe: Argentina, the USA, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, France, Portugal, Germany, Italy and the UK.
Likewise, when Brazilians travel abroad, their main destinations are Argentina, the USA, Chile, Portugal, France, Italy, Uruguay, the Caribbean, Spain and the UK.
Share of exports to Asia: ~41%
Share of exports to the Americas and Europe combined: ~47%
Share of imports from Asia: ~43%
Share of imports from the Americas and Europe combined: ~50%
How could one reach the conclussion that Brazil is an "Eastern" country? Oh yeah, they joined a trade organization with China and Russia ... sure, they must be Eastern now.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_language
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_Brazil
I agree that Brazil is Western, because it obviously is; it's a former European colony that speaks a European language and has European religious and cultural values. But geography has nothing to do with the concept of "Westernness", beyond historical etymology. Australia and New Zealand are as much part of "the West" as Canada is.
> I ask since a significant chunk of people from the US cannot find Mexico on a map ...
Wrong thread?
The comment I see reads like this:
"That sounds a little authoritarian for many Western countries, I imagine."
Where's Russia and Australia then?
The European ECB isn't really in a position to directly offer services to people, and relying on every country's central banks to cooperate will take decades.
Perhaps it's a difference in banking culture between different countries; I would certainly not put the same trust and faith in a Wero alternative set up by American banks, that's for sure.
Banks are beholden to policy from the central bank and financial authorities. Payment fees are capped, payment processing terms aren't a free-for all, and the power of individual banks is kept in check. The people doe have a voice in all of this, just not in the direct implementation process.
The American companies Mastercard and Visa are subject to American rule of law. In the case of a criminal or authoritarian president, such is an issue. You can see how Russian assets got frozen and SWIFT stopped working for Russia after they did the full scale invasion of Ukraine.
Should the USA invade Greenland, they could stop bank payments done via Mastercard or Visa networks.
So for sovereignty, we are better off without USA. We should also transfer our gold and other assets out of USA, since the country is moving towards fascism.
SWIFT is a cooperative of banks also but it seems that some central banks endeavours are better. BTW Argentina created an innovation back in the early 2000s as a product of a crisis. It was implemented in record time and transfers were immediate back then and improving. It's not run by the central banks though.
The ECB is directly governed by European Union law. Its capital stock, worth €11 billion, is owned by all 27 central banks of the EU member states as shareholders.[6] The initial capital allocation key was determined in 1998 on the basis of the states' population and GDP, but the capital key has been readjusted since.[6] Shares in the ECB are not transferable and cannot be used as collateral.
-- Italian Central bank As of early 2024, the 15 largest shareholders represented slightly over half of the bank's equity, namely UniCredit (5.0 percent), Cassa nazionale di previdenza ed assistenza per gli ingegneri ed architetti liberi professionisti [it] (4.9 percent), Fondazione ENPAM [it] (4.9 percent), Cassa nazionale di previdenza e assistenza forense [it] (4.9 percent), Intesa Sanpaolo (4.9 percent), Cassa nazionale di previdenza e assistenza dei dottori commercialisti [it] (3.7 percent), BPER Banca (3.3 percent), ICCREA Banca (3.1 percent), Generali Italia (3.0 percent), the National Institute for Social Security (3.0 percent), Istituto nazionale per l'assicurazione contro gli infortuni sul lavoro (3.0 percent), Cassa di Sovvenzioni e Risparmio fra il Personale della Banca d'Italia [it] (3.0 percent), Cassa di Risparmio di Asti (3.0 percent), Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (2.8 percent), and Crédit Agricole Italia (2.8 percent). The remaining 49 percent were dispersed among 157 shareholders, mainly banks and banking foundations.[49]
Hell even the homeless people around here take donations in PIX, but you can also buy a house with it. Zero fees involved
Won’t someone think of the profits!
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.
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...
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.
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.
The moment you start burdening the payment processor with the roles of judge/referee over all goods and services you end up with the mess we have with CCs where Visa/Mastercard are morality czars that dictate what goods and services are valid or invalid, nuking people and companies out of modern society for their own arbitrary reasons.
Edit: And just to add, you can have "chargeback" for PIX as a separate service, most banks offer PIX insurance that is basically CC chargeback by a different name. But the key is that it is separate from the payment infrastructure itself, it is an insurance service that you contract separately. And that separation ins very important, the insurance company can't roll back transactions arbitrarily, or deny people access to the financial system, they have to pay the victim and then claw back their money in court, which is the appropriate venue to decide who is right or wrong in a transaction.
Base payment products should just do payment at operating margins rivaling a non-profit. It's public infrastructure
Outside pressure behind much of it.
In any case, there's a fundamental mismatch between pressure groups and the leverage they can exert through single-consensus. I don't know how to describe the other consensus that is on my brain, but it is distinct.
This is the reason I only _ever_ spend money on credit cards, and never use cash or debit cards (European in the US). I've personally had at least three disputes this year resolved in my favor by American Express, and will not sign up for something that suggests courts should do so instead.
And just to add, you can have "chargeback" for PIX as a separate service, most banks offer PIX insurance that is basically CC chargeback by a different name. But the key is that it is separate from the payment infrastructure itself, it is an insurance service that you contract separately. And that separation ins very important, the insurance company can't roll back transactions arbitrarily, or deny people access to the financial system, they have to pay the victim and then claw back their money in court, which is the appropriate venue to decide who is right or wrong in a transaction.
Disputes between non-fraudulent entities happen of course. But I really don't like some algorithm somewhere taking seemingly arbitrary decisions on that. It usually just amounts to robbing merchants of their money, and adding some exorbitant refund fee to top it of. Settling disputes is what small claims court and dispute committees are for.
Of course, with iDeal now effectively becoming EU-wide, things may get more difficult.
Which illustrates one of the most prolific examples of regulatory capture.
Credit cards became mainstream because of that protection, which was a triumph for the payment processors. Whatever they spent on lobbying was a bargain.
This is no longer the case outside US. Last time I had the account of one of the few credit cards I'm using (on the Visa or Mastercard networks), for transactions I should have been clearly reimbursed / credited, as it used to be the case, actually awarded in my favor, was four years ago. Recent transactions, with proven vendor at fault, ended up with my loss. All over Europe (Im traveling a lot). So no tears shed for Visa or Mastercard losing the EU turf.
Visa/Mastercard aren't handling chargebacks, the banks are. With PIX the way to get a chargeback is the same: if you've been victim of fraud you open a claim with the bank, they'll review it, then possibly give you a charge back within a week. This review process might take longer or be denied, which requires a lawsuit.
But it's only less risky for banks to chargeback immediately on Visa/Mastercard because they make so much money from credit card fees that they can afford it.
Like, yes, it’s technically a bad deal. But it’s still worth the extra cost for most people
Is it? You charge back over 2% of your transaction volume? If you don't then just removing the middleman will make everyone happier. If you do, I have questions as to why...
My Brazillian bank charges me 600% yearly interest on credit card purchases.
However, the cost of a lawsuit can quickly offset the costs of a CC. Depending on the state, there may not be a maximum cap on expenses, making lawsuits incredibly expensive. (Whereas having paid by card you could ask for a chargeback instead of needing to sue)
It's also a very time consuming ordeal having to sue vendors in these instances.
They are now hesitantly joining Wero, supporting it only to downplay and to lobby ECB for an API platform and not for a product.
BLIK was launched in 2015 according to Wikipedia; iDeal is from 2005.
Direct Debit is very nice, largely because your bank manages the subscription; companies have to declare the payment ahead of time and if you get balance mixed up for some reason, then the bank will just do the payment whenever your balance is correct if it happens within a week. I've had credit cards decline on subscriptions before because I didn't have enough loaded up on them. Never had that issue with SEPA.
Either that or "credit cards just work", so very few entities bothered until now.
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.
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.
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.
It also seems to go against common security advice. "Never log into your back account if redirected by a website you sort of, but don't really trust, except sometimes its alright and it's up to you to tell the difference" is a terrible way to secure banking.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Unfortunately, legacy deployments have just proven too pervasive to effect real change, even with substantial incentives, especially in early card adopting markets such as the US.
Are there still cards that work without 2FA?
Does it handle credit card payments?
Irony aside, yeah, this is a significant downside compared to hardware-based standards. Not so much for Android, as Google Pay and most competitors are implemented in software, but on a hypothetical iPhone or Garmin device running an open OS (don't laugh, it's a thought experiment), payment data security would be not much of a concern since all payment keys live in a secure and completely separate chip.
And authorize yourself with the banking app, and, and...
It's not less complicated than auto filling credit/debit card details with your finger print on your phone or laptop.
For consumers, Wero, Pix, and similar systems only have down sides for online use. The most important down side is that you can't reclaim your funds if you've been the victim of fraud. Which you can when paying by card.
If they do so, they are telling the card issuer that they are happy to be on the hook for chargebacks/fraud. It's not an decision without consequences
We ought to have liability shifting. A long time ago there was a liability shift where if a merchant uses the magnetic stripe on a card equipped with a chip, then the merchant is unconditionally liable in case of a chargeback. We just needed merchants to be liable when the bank supported 3DSecure but the merchant chose not to use it.
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.
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.
Of course, it is incorrect, and digital payments everywhere (on a kiosk or online) should be intentional pushes, not pulls.
The merchant should never be able to pull from your bank account. However, the merchant can send an invoice for a payment. Either the customer manually pushes the payment, or delegates to the bank that each invoice from merchant X should immediately result in a payment push [1].
The difference from the pull system is that the customer can at any point end this automatic push payment, but in the pull system the customer can only beg the merchant (eg. the gym) to stop charging their account.
[1] Or even better in an ideal world, delegate this pushing to their local finance app. So the bank can't put roadblocks for a customer cancelling a subscription.
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
That's really not how it works. You as the user are prompted to pick the bank you want to use, and then your bank prompts you to approve the transaction.
The only scenario I can think of that might involve google or apple is if you want to use Android or iPhone for mobile payments with NFC.
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.
Its annoying - but it feels quite secure
That's basically Paypal and everyone still shits on them.
On the other hand, I see an unknown charge on my credit-card, dispute with my bank, and it's handled.
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.
in Latvia we need to do this for domestic payments anyway. We use IBAN even for domestic payments..
> and likely your legal name.
not mandatory. If provided, the bank tells you whether the recipient name matches the account, but if not, you can proceed with the payment anyway.
I, too, would prefer to just be able to give people a random number to send money to. Isn't that a GDPR requirement anyway: data minimisation? Can they legally require this beyond their 90% of the law (that is, custody of the thing I'm trying to move)?
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.
I hate random English words as company names. The other day I saw a company called Runway and it seemed interesting. Turns out there's quite a few companies called Runway or with a product called Runway, in the same industry.
Same with Bolt.
And I hate that Meta is now the company name so I can't look for meta stuff without also getting results about the company formerly known as Facebook.
https://stemerlaw.com/2025/07/16/why-are-amazon-brand-names-...
On the other hand though, there are still .org and .net if you are lucky.
I usually just use tld-list.com to find all the domains from a particular keyword and then you can buy one which can be nice (eg: I bought https://mirror.forum this way)
that being said, you can find the registration prices to sometimes be cheap but the renewal prices can be double the .com or more (which is around 8-10$)
For my domain of https://use.expert its renewal is around 40-50$ (4x .com price) but probably worth it as I really love it but I might drop a few domains like mirror.forum as its 20$ just doesn't feel worth it to me and I will just auction it in some forums, not really that sure at the moment
So TLDR: you can find some good names if really need be but the idea generally for these startups is to do something similar to what I am saying and then buy the .com later if/when they have the funds, personally I am not that big of a fan of .com but I do realize that I have more chances of remembering .com's because that's the default expectation of the internet.
“Payments via Zoosha? K-smog and Batboy launch new startup.”
- Mike, co-founder of MoistAI
so true. those names are silly. also, French and Spanish can already send money for free via IBAN / SEPA
https://www.retailbankerinternational.com/comment/barclays-r...
International money transfers, even between currencies, now take seconds whenever I do them.
The "map phone number to bank account" services do make this whole thing a lot easier, but on the other hand I kind of don't want to help scammers by giving them the option to look up what bank they need to pretend to be before dialing a number.
You can do it once, and save in in your bank app.
> wait a day for the transfer to take place.
Isn't instant SEPA required to be supported by all banks now?
I try not to send or write my IBAN just anywhere. With things like Direct Debit, I treat it with care. Sharp contrast with Paypal, where you can use your email address or even have a paypal.me page that does not expose your email at all.
> Isn't instant SEPA required to be supported by all banks now?
Yes, and yet I think it's not supported by all banks. Especially those that are not in the Euro area. One more thing - many people including me are to this day not informed or aware if instant payments are charged by banks or not. I honestly don't know.
I could do it via IBAN and it would mostly (not to all banks) instant.
My bank also allows payments via a phone number now. Tested once and it works, but everyone's used to Revolut for bill splitting here in Romania.
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...
That may well be true of the working class, who receive nothing from the foreign income multinational corporations earn but face more competition to buy housing from the people who do receive a share, and more competition for jobs from foreigners (both immigration and globalization).
I find the self loathing is usually well qualified and not at all a performative act. Performative for who exactly?
Now let's see your introspection (:
Apologies the other way around, though.
I guess I should have included that in my reply in case someone else thought I was being hypocritical ?
We've had such a closely integrated economy and it's been a win-win for a very long time. Whether it's resources like lumber or manufacturing like Ontario/Michigan, or massive amounts of fuel refinement, we're so closely interconnected that we've needed that ease of cross-border travel for work. A consequence is that our industry hasn't evolved as much as it could have. We're sitting on an enormous amount of natural resources and technical competence that we've been feeding in to American companies forever, because we were reaping sufficient profits.
What the current regime could absolutely do is force us further from that local maxima by throwing a tantrum over TN1 visas.
I work with a lot of Americans so I know they understand deeply: changing careers out of principle is a rare luxury very few can act on. Especially when you depend on your employer for healthcare (though we don't suffer that mistake as much). I wouldn't expect people to voluntarily quit their jobs the same way they are voluntarily stopping U.S. recreational travel in record numbers [1].
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cross-border-travel-down-dr...
I'm sure I can invert the sign of something being measured to make my mental model work again :D
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.
Or maybe they'll have it in the great independent territory of Greenland as well.
That’s funny because it perfectly defines the relationship between the EU and the countries in it.
> 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.
I guess it doesn't have to be perfect to make a funny name though.
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).
I don't think Wero can "win" this from just the merchants side. It's got to be better for the customer's side.
I agree this could be a difficult battle and we effectively need some alternative to existing card issuers if they are to be displaced.
Current contactless payments are easy, secure and allow disputes etc.
That said I picked it up from Steve Jobs talking about cable networks in the US.
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.
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...).
Opposite is also true, some lower-value places (like fruitstands, street vendors) don't accept card/contactless because they don't want to pay visa mastercard fee.
I have no numbers but I would guess at least 50% of non-cash transactions are still card/contactless. I wouldn't be surprised if this number is 90%.
No single country can claim ownership because it's an EU initiative. iDeal was one of the first and relatively easy systems across the EU, but it's hardly the predecessor.
Wero also does peer-to-peer transfers which iDeal doesn't (unless you use iDeal to pay for tikkies but that's still two apps). The new system is not just an iDeal rebranding.
Directly, without Tikkie? That's really interesting. I wasn't aware of that yet. My impression was indeed mostly a rebranding and expansion of iDeal.
The greatest force of Wero is that, being from a bank consortium and not "another app", you can send money to people that don't even know the system exists as long as you have their phone number because the money will go straight to the bank account registered with this phone number.
You don't need to register to the service to receive money so basically anyone holding an account in a compatible bank can receive funds instantly. Which means, as the person sending the money, you don't have to tell your friends to install it.
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.
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/
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?
[2] https://nyheter24.se/nyheter/ekonomi/privatekonomi/1452366-d...
I have recently seen people surprised when they sent a Wero transaction and the other party could see their IBAN.
I know the Swedish government is also pressuring swish to integrate with vipps. So I guess you'll have this ability soon.
What I fear is that people will try Wero, see that it's not what they wanted and then never go back. But maybe I'm wrong.
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
* Buyer protection
* Obfuscation of my banking data (IBAN)
* Having access to it with my bank
* Not needing to share my contact list
At the moment I don't see much improvement over an instant SEPA transaction. Since both parties will see each other's IBAN anyways with Wero I can just give out my IBAN.
Wero does introduce some sort of chargebacks and disputes, buy from reputable sellers and otherwise you are still free to use paypal for additional protection (but don't send money as "Friends & Family").
> Obfuscation of my banking data (IBAN)
IBAN is public facing and it is not a problem to share. It is the identifier of your account therefore required to make transfers. Money can't be charged with your IBAN. With paypal you share your e-mail.
> Having access to it with my bank
Your bank is the one that is providing the access to the Wero service, it will pull from or deposit into your bank account.
> Not needing to share my contact list
I don't see how this is required.
The strength of Wero is that it will be a unified friction less way of making digital transfers. It finds a similar place in the market that in the USA is filled by Venmo or Cash app however if you have a bank account you can use it.
I think it speaks volumes that no one within the Netherlands uses Paypal, but iDeal is the de-facto standard for all online payments there.
It's not like it's that difficult to implement. Most Brazilian banks implemented a similar protocol in months.
I think the Digital Euro initiative is closer to replacing contactless payments than Wero is, but it'll depend on the country I think.
From a software freedom perspective, I actually prefer QR codes. The UX of tapping a card is a little better (though it also opens up an avenue for theft) but I think every phone I've held the past ten years has had some way to quickly scan a QR code from the lock screen, even if not every phone made the possibility obvious.
Instead of tapping or swiping the card, you tap the phone or watch, or scan a QR on your phone and then confirm in the bank app. Both ways seem to have similar useability to me, and an equivalent result. I've done both in different countries, and neither really bothered me. Yes, the tap method has higher potential for petty theft.
Again, China has what is has because people had phones but no payment cards, and they don't have "software freedom" either (whatever that means): They are fully bound to the two providers (Alipay and WeChat) which provide accounts to a point now that is much worse that my dependency or Visa or Mastercard here in Europe because most places now do not accept anything else.
What would make sense is for the likes of Wero to find a way to support contactless so people can just tap exactly as they do now. As said by another commenter, this does not require a physical card (and already exists with Apple Pay and Google Pay). Frankly, Wero is a solution looking for a problem at this point in time...
Optionally you scan or get send a payment request, and pay through Wero.
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.
How? With a SEPA transfer I can actually see who I'm paying. With a CC or equivalent it's a lottery.
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
And even those of us who have activated it, have hardly used it for the most part, or hve concerns.
Given that each participating country already had existing payment systems, perhaps that number is just international payments?
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.
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.
And regarding Visa and Mastercard being US payment networks: This is now undoubtedly the case, but for much of their history, their EU subsidiaries were actually independent cooperatives owned by large European network member banks. They only sold their respective stakes to the US parent organizations in the late 90s, back when European banks, in a pretty severe blunder, considered cards a thing of the past of no importance for the future.
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.
Visa and MasterCard are everywhere though
Will these new systems remove the middle man skimming that MasterCard/Visa has been doing to small businesses?
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.
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.
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.
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.
They are all fine for a simple wire transfer.
I do have Intesa myself cause I've got mortgage through them and sending a wire transfer is both simple and fast.
So is on our other accounts: BBVA (Italian), mBank (Polish), Credem (Italian), Mediobanca (IT) and XTB and Revolut (both PL and IT).
I think you're really describing a 10 year old non-issue.
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.
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.
I wish the “old school” banks here were more competitive in this regard.
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.
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.
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.
> ethical capitalists
That is not a coherent concept, especially in late stage capitalism.
Blaming the media, capitalism, Debbie whatshername and insider elites is just Bernie Bro conspiracy theory making excuses for a bad, unpopular candidate.
It's safe to assume you've either drunk the kool-aid or have something to gain monetarily (even if falsely assumed) by allowing the illusion to persist. Either way, you're literally part of the problem, as is anyone else who still takes this system seriously.
Is it? Am I? As a former Sanders caucuser who didn't fall for his supporters' both sides bullshit, perhaps some self-reflection on why running a candidate who's only popular with white people in Iowa is a bad idea would be in order.
Europe: <launches European payment initiative>
America: NOT LIKE THAT!!!
Can you post a source supporting this?
https://restofworld.org/2025/pix-brazil-us-investigation-dig...
> “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.
This whole "new" ecosystem is just gluing together existing national digital payment solutions so it can be used internationally.
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.
As far as I can tell, all of this is "OK" because the primary target market for UPI One World is NRIs - again, who needs foreign tourists?
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.
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 suppose some added sovereignty is to be expected when your closest ally extorts, threatens annexation and slams you with tariffs.
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.
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.
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.
Europe needs to be functionally as independent as possible.
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.
pix as already proven in Brazil - is faster. this system again will be faster & secure & more convenient with less fees.
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.
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.)
