If you have the cash its super easy. Need to have at least 300k euro frozen in the account, go through the process of getting EMI (european money institute) licensed and start fiddling with GNU Taler.
Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
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Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#22> National pride and competing banking interests repeatedly sabotaged attempts at unification. That's exactly the problem. Several actors have won the market of their country, but only of their country. Will Trump be enough to make the europeans realize that they need to work together, and that an italian win is just as good as a german win?
>and that an italian win is just as good as a german win
I agree with you
However that specific example somehow feels off and déjà vu
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#23Nothing in France takes Discover, and my bank decided to go with Discover about 6 months ago. "Great" decision, thanks.
My wife found out her new card was Discover debit card right before her trip to France. Her bank sent her a new card unrequested. In an abundance of caution she activated the new card which automatically cancelled her debit Mastercard. Then when she landed in CDG found the new card didn't work anywhere.
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#24When India moved to UPI in the last few years something very interesting happened. The same devices that accept UPI (usually some android based POS) also accepted a plethora of cards. Previously merchants would be hesitant to take anything other than cash or charge 2% for visa/mastercard. But with wide adoption of digital payments they now just accept any payment with the goal that they don't want bad reviews and/or…
You mean that the 2% something visa/Mastercard demand, is far more digestible by merchants when it doesn't represent the majority of their revenue?
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#25I always find it entertaining to hear people try to argue that what these companies do is soooooo difficult and that's why they're valuable. It's just multiple computers keeping a balance. It's not complicated. No, these companies keep themselves in power not because they've solved such a difficult problem that nobody else can, but because they have a moat which they protect. Time to do away with these foreign entiti…
Each individual detail isn't difficult, the moat is dealing with a huge, huge, pile of them. But most of the details are driven by laws and regulations: of the entity in charge of those things decides it doesn't want you to have a moat any more, you've got a problem. If there's one thing the EU really does have, it's the capacity to revise regulations.
Rather than a moat of details, it's first-mover advantage. Anyone can run a credit card network, but merchants and banks need to support them. Many others exist, but the issue is that they don't have widespread adoption. Solutions that work exist, which means the lesser supported alternative is not widely used, which again reduces reason for wider adoption...
Regulation changes "why bother" to "oh crap".
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#26So Wero is not a credit card, but something more like Venmo? How is it supposed to replace Visa and Mastercard?
Easy when shops start supporting them.
I've paid numerous time using the swiss counterpart, Twint, in small shops. For some like the farm I used to buy vegetables to it was their only supported payment besides cash because they deemed the card systems too expensive.
The same way chinese tourists can already pay with alipay in many retatail outlets in europe, you can already pay with such european systems on Aliexpress. More are probably comming.
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#27So Wero is not a credit card, but something more like Venmo? How is it supposed to replace Visa and Mastercard?
It's for online payments only. You click on the wero button on a website/app, if on mobile takes you to your banking app (on desktop, you scan a QR code), you do MFA on your banking app and confirm, and the payment is done. Wero are not in the business of issuing cards, though obviously they could get into that business - just like UnionPay did in China. I suspect there would be a lot of inertia there, as card paymen…
Cards are also online payment. You can already pay with such systems in some physical shops and restaurants, alongside google/apple/alipay.
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#28If you have the cash its super easy . Need to have at least 300k euro frozen in the account, go through the process of getting EMI (european money institute) licensed and start fiddling with GNU Taler.
I'd rather have a GNU Taler based system (private for consumers, transparent for the business), but given the overextending urge to destroy any remaining privacy by EU governments, I doubt it would ever happen.
Instead, we are getting a digital euro, a fully dystopian abomination.
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#29Most, if not all countries have their own domestic payment systems. This is about cross-border payments within the EU. “Breakup” seems a bit exaggerated considering the % of payment volume which might switch to the new system.
Russia switched 100% of its payments seamlessly, no reason for the EU not to do the same. Build up the network and tell banks to use that network even for transactions initiated with Visa/MC cards. At that point cards are still usable, but effectively a piece of identification plastic not directly controlled by Visa/MC anymore.
> seamlessly
It's not seamless if it includes a war, global isolation, exodus of all business and disconnection of the banks. This means they were left with no alternative, in which case, sure, it's 'seamless' to use the only alternative method.
Europe will have a lot of friction with consumer habits and Visa will always be relevant for buying things from outside EU. These are all competing entities which hate anything that makes them seamlessly lose their business.
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#30This is the fourth attempt in two decades. Here is the short history of earlier attempts:
https://x.com/moo9000/status/2006304163404128289
The difference this time is that Digital Euro is forced by ECB and control (and deposits) are taken away from banks.