Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun • Hacker News Board

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#51

Post by mhitza » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

miroljub wrote: post #28

mhitza wrote: post #21

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.

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.

As far as I know the "digital euro" should allow for offline payments. At least in principle I should be able to offload to an offline/on-device wallet and give money to anyone without the servers knowledge.

But I'm sure there are plenty of villains and idiots that will try (and succeed) in diluting those principles and will get some dystopian (trace everything) version of that.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#52

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

bux93 wrote: post #16

tlogan wrote: post #5

So 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…

[deleted]

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#53

Post by bparsons » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #8

I 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…

Canada has had the INTERAC payment system for over 20 years now. It is privately run by Canadian banks, universally accepted and runs on a cost recovery basis.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#54

Post by unmole » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

havaloc wrote: post #46

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #8

I 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…

I think it's probably a little bit harder than you think with all the rules and regulations out there. I would highly encourage anybody who's remotely interested, listen to the Acquired podcast episode regarding Visa. It's actually quite fascinating how it was started. You may balk at the length, but the whole thing had me interested. https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/visa

India built RuPay, China built UnionPay. There's no reason why Europe can't do the same.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#55

Post by compounding_it » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

leosanchez wrote: post #40

compounding_it wrote: post #13

When 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…

> 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 lose customers. My experience is opposite, Now with UPI which 99% of people have access to there is no incentive for people to accept Credit Cards.

The competition is high with online ordering (which accepts cards), so the incentive is to not lose customers. in fact people have become so desperate for more sales that they would let you take something and pay later but not lose you as a customer.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#56

Post by mzajc » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

Can I use it without installing their software on my smartphone? Question is rhetorical - of course not, and your smartphone also needs to pass Google's or Apple's remote attestation schemes. Good riddance.

Is it really just PayPal left offering a sane online payment service?

---

From https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599074240...:

> It is not possible to use Wero via a web browser or on a computer.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#57

Post by fodmap » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:11 PM UTC

(Almost?) all these EU efforts to be independent from the USA are born with a fatal flaw. They require you need to be an Apple user or a Google user.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#58

Post by ajsnigrutin » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:11 PM UTC

Jyaif wrote: post #9

> 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?

For someone from france, sure.

For both italians and germans, it matters who wins (and i'm not making a pun here).

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#59

Post by Anonyneko » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:11 PM UTC

seydor wrote: post #29

Anonyneko wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anythi…

That's not how it worked, Russia prepared well in advance before the war (admittedly, after Crimea-related sanctions scared the hell out of them in 2014). When the 2022 sanctions dropped, transactions within Russian borders kept working seamlessly because the banks were already using the Mir network for those regardless of card types, i.e. you can still use your Russian-bank-issued Visa today for internal purchases. And I firmly believe that Europe needs the same kind of security for its digital payment systems, something akin to IBAN that solved this for EU-wide bank transfers (which is why I'm not sure if it's wise to use some random commercial product as a base).

Of course, right now nothing can dethrone Visa/MC for international payments, besides perhaps crypto in very limited and often shady scenarios. And Europe can't really do anything about that. But that's a different problem altogether (one that annoys me to no end as a frequent purchaser of digital products from Japan).

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#60

Post by jsiepkes » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 4:12 PM UTC

havaloc wrote: post #46

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #8

I 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…

I think it's probably a little bit harder than you think with all the rules and regulations out there. I would highly encourage anybody who's remotely interested, listen to the Acquired podcast episode regarding Visa. It's actually quite fascinating how it was started. You may balk at the length, but the whole thing had me interested. https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/visa

In the Netherlands, before VISA, there already was a national debit card standard called PIN [1]. Sure, times have changed and it's probably not super easy, but it's also not going to be super hard.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIN_(debit_card)