- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
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When? This has been happening for many years now. Slower than turtle.
Yes… When please :(
I mea, they did release Wero
Which does nothing for point of sale at present, it is only vaguely ‘planned’.
In Europe we didn’t really rely on credit cards for online payments anyway. It was an option but far from the only one. The problem was just that each country had their own system which was a PITA. Wero unifies those. Handy for webmasters, but geopolitically not a gamechanger.
The big problem is PoS payments where MC/Visa are king and basically have a duopoly. I don’t know why Wero didn’t start with the elephant in the room.
Yes, Wero is there it is made up of consortium of banks and not unified interface. Also, the adoption itself is very poor.
Where? On what platform? How can one install and use such a thing?
I’m gonna disappoint you now.
- Only some EU countries have joined so far, and I believe not all banks for those either. Here’s a list
- You can use either your bank app or the Wero app, available on Play Store or App Store. No Wero without a Google/Apple approved phone and app, unless there’s a bank that provides an APK file and doesn’t rely on Play Services
- You can’t use it to pay in person yet, it’s more of a PayPal replacement than a Visa/MasterCard replacement
- If/when the point of sale payments become a thing, it will be via a QR. No plastic card you can use when your phone battery is flat. I have no idea if they’re planning on changing that.
Personally I can’t use it, it’s not available in my country. I can however send people money instantly by doing a SEPA Instant transfer, the only “difficult” part about is needing their IBAN, which they can just copy and paste into a messenger app or send via a text if it’s a stranger (like the one or two times I’ve bought a car off a stranger via bank transfer - which mostly there’s no need to here as the Estonian transport authority actually has a secure method for that which guarantees that the car’s ownership is transferred when the money is transferred - and works via a bank link)
There’s been talk of an European payment card system too, but usually people just go “well the individual countries already have their systems so there’s no need, Wero is all you need”. Which I disagree with, because 1) many EU countries do NOT have a payment card system 2) those systems require you to use your card in your own country mostly. If there was a big EU-wide system, it would more than likely also be accepted in non-EU countries in the future and we could have European cards with the Visa/MasterCard experience where you just go to pretty much any country in the world and your card JUST WORKS. Till that happens, you still need to own a Visa or Mastercard if you want to go abroad, though luckily you can just have a virtual card for that nowadays.
TL;DR: It currently has like two use cases which are already mostly handled well enough by normal bank transfers, which are instant up to like 10k EUR IIRC (might’ve been more, might’ve been less) and available much more widely. Though if wero offers consumer protections, it MAY be a bit better in online purchases than a normal transfer - but as long as you only buy from reputable sites, that’s not too big of an issue anyway, and there’s three and a half online stores that let you buy using wero apparently (this is just what I’ve heard, can’t confirm - it’s not available in my country after all)
And there are dozens of websites that accept it. Dozens!
Hopefully, Europe will offer options to Americans. I want to enjoy my perverse media, and to oppose christofascist organizations.
Wero lets users send money using just a phone number
No, Wero lets users send money using a smartphone. If there’s no desktop interface (like Poland’s BLIK) I’m gonna be disappointed. I know India’s UPI runs on HMD dumbphones, would be nice to have something like this.
Well, it’s a law within the EU that instant payments need to be fulfilled within 10 seconds. If you select that after logging into your bank it shouldn’t be an issue, though it should be the automatic option, IMO; you shouldn’t have to enable it, but rather disable it if you don’t wanna send money instantly, and IMO banks should already know this. My only gripe is that most banks in Europe don’t have a proper “user account” system. It’s more of an address book as opposed to a contacts list. I’d prefer pressing on my peer’s name through a search function on the home screen, than needing to select his name from a list after pressing the specific button for it in the menu to send money, which I’ve already had to press another specific button for; just to reduce the steps needed to send money. I don’t see why that is not doable.
Knowing the EU and my country, the reason is “security” by difficulty. Boomer-ass continent.
No, you need a smart phone for UPI.
So it doesn’t work in every dumb phone. You need specific devices or smartphone.
That’s a question for your bank. Wero is a system designed for mobile payments between banks, but in 95% of all cases it’s your bank implementing it for the user.
The real wise move is to use cash whenever possible, folks.
screw that… trade goods/services for goods/services.
much better approach then letting some fatass gobble everything then control everything like now
Europe just seems to be making all the right moves. Made apple go usb-c. This. Privacy laws. And more.
Some right moves, sure.
Norway have BankAxept. I’ve waited for this. Cut ties!
problem
Slop title.
The solutions are ready, super cheap, and the transition period gradual & managed.It is a revenue problem for MasterCard & Visa, bcs no more free monies for them.
And no more data as well. Don’t forget about the consumer data.
Oh, yes, absolutely a valid point!
That has enormous consequences, third parties & data brokers are making a killing & worsen our society.
fuck em
It saddens me that crypto never really became a legit cash replacement. I guess the incumbents are just way too powerful, and Bitcoin kind of got off on the wrong footing.
To be fair, bitcoin is trash and crypto proponents shot themselves in the foot by deciding to stick with it as the “flagship” coin for so long.
Well, being dependent on a central authority wasn’t solved.
And the digital Euro capable of offline transactions (when/if it ever comes) seems just as good.
Crypto did establish itself as a sort of additional alternative value holder tho (like a gold alternative).
Well, being dependent on a central authority wasn’t solved.
Sure it was. The only friction point is cashing out to fiat, but nothing is stopping people from doing that independent of a bank or central authority (see localbitcoin and localmonero)
Government don’t like cryptos, they can’t control them so it’s normal they won’t promote them. But cryptos have come a long way, they are used extensively for cheap cross border transfers and with Proof of Stake we don’t need mining any more (and its problematic energy consumption):
What is a legit and currently in use Proof of Stake cryptocoin?
Ethereum (ETH) and Solana are the most common examples, but there are many more
It hard to replace currency with a speculative commodity.
Good, as an american, fuck em. I cant wait to see the US crash and burn.
Why? I don’t understand your perspective here. Shouldn’t your interest lie with the country you live in?
Yeah it would be if my country had anything worth saving. The US is an international cess-pit that’s rotting everything it touches. I’ve been lower middle class to broke all my life so this shit collapsing is just another day. I feel bad for the children and elderly but overall the people who will get hurt deserve to have their worldviews shatter while the US crumbles under its own cancerous despotic weight. Too many people in my country are too comfortable sitting idly by while we rape and rob the global south and its time for that to end.
You won’t have to wait very long
Yeah I just worry about the power vacuum left over once this bitch crumbles
Unfortunately dying empires don’t go down quietly
The article omits that Wero is running on top of AWS. So still the same problem, just slightly lower in the stack.
Centralized problems are generally easier to solve than distributed problems. Depending on their architecture moving to an EU cloud provider could range from tricky but manageable to very painful , but it’s a centralized IT problem that can be attacked and solved. Getting every retail vendor to support Wero is much harder, and is being solved apparently.
While true, the AWS infrastructure in Europe is somewhat sovereign from the parent company and under stricter regulation and oversight. Granted, it’s not a perfect solution but a good one for the moment.
That’s a lie, just marketing. See the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
I don’t know much about the payment processors but I would assume Visa and MasterCard run on their own hardware? Or are they also tied to a cloud provider these days?
Valid point.
But technically an easier transition to own solutions at some point.Wero has its roots before the overall critical industry ‘digital independence’ got enough attention (in the recent year), it was more about solving a specific duopoly (that a lot of banks & startups started solving anyway, just way more fragmented).
It’s easier to replace AWS with a European alternative, than Visa or Mastercard. So the problem is smaller.
True, and I also did not mean to let better be the enemy of good. Just that we’re not in the clear yet.
Break-up? If only… I hate these stupid exaggerated clickbaity titles.
It’s hardly more than a realization of their toxic relationship. But that is indeed the 1st step of change.
a $24 trillion problem for Visa and Mastercard maybe
Good that the article points out that the US and Chinese providers are already fighting the European alternatives. By occupying other layers of the stack, rendering European digital payment sovereignty impossible. High time to accelerate this!
Brazil should advertise PIX.
It’s a serious problem, but not for Europe. Fuck US megacorps.
