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

europeanbusinessmagazine.com

121–130 of 1001 posts

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

#121

Would be nice of the EU to provide a digital payment service quasi free of charge - without commercial provider's typical predatory fees and other costs. And don't counter with "privacy" .. it's not like all the American companies already have to provide backend access to their data to the NSA and other 3 letter agencies.

Wero, the system the article is about, already is free for personal transfers and 0,15€ for commercial acounts (at least for my bank)

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

#122
post #45

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…

> 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. I don't know that the problem is sophisticated, but it's certainly complex [1]. It's a bit of both in terms of complexity and defending a moat, which all businesses do, including, and especially European ones. And companies like Visa, Mastercard, Ame…

> Well you have to deal with American and European financial regulations, KYC, &c. - you have to vet merchants, you have to run the infrastructure to process transactions, refunds, direct payments from bank accounts to pay for cards, and all of those things. Those are real, genuine business activities that are non-negotiable and while they may seem simple, in practice they are not at all simple.

Those are partially or completely taken over not by the card network but by the bank that is issuing you the card, so a change in the underlying technology will be transparent.

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

#123

Would be nice of the EU to provide a digital payment service quasi free of charge - without commercial provider's typical predatory fees and other costs. And don't counter with "privacy" .. it's not like all the American companies already have to provide backend access to their data to the NSA and other 3 letter agencies.

Uhm, the EU already has free instant SEPA transfers? I use it regularly, sadly not all EU banks support it (smaller ones sometimes have issues and have to resort to standard oldschool 2-day transfer, but they are also free).

How do you do your groceries with that?

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

#124
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most obvious difference being that unlike China or India, Europe (or the EU) is not a single country. This doesn't make things impossible but certainly complicates them.

Exactly, now that the internet is ubiquitous, none of the problems with replacing credit card companies like VISA are really technical . They are regulatory, they are political, they are social.

And before Trump it wasn't worth the aggravation. It wasn't worth the pushback from the US government.

Trump sure has moved the needle on that! We used to pay protection money to the US via this. Now we don't get the protection, so we don't need to pay.

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

#126
post #57

(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.

this don't require that.

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

> 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.

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

#127

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…

I was there when this started to roll this out - I remember a lot of nice pine labs payment terminals - it was really nice that I could begin to depend on my American Express card there more than trying to finagle cash (2000inr bills get you a lot of frustrated service workers). I say AmEx because they tended to work much better than my visa there.

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

#128
post #45

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…

> 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. I don't know that the problem is sophisticated, but it's certainly complex [1]. It's a bit of both in terms of complexity and defending a moat, which all businesses do, including, and especially European ones. And companies like Visa, Mastercard, Ame…

> Because at a minimum you want American tourist dollars and Europe isn't going to start issuing European credit cards to Americans or other citizens around the world.

It could be handled similarly to how tourists in Brazil can now use Brazil's Pix payment system.

One way Brazil handles it is with 3rd party digital wallets that tourists can install on their phones such as Wallbit [1]. Another way is with 3rd party services that let you pay from your own digital wallet or bank app and the service makes the Pix payment [2].

[1] https://www.wallbit.io/en/blog/brazilian-pix-and-a-payment-a...

[2] https://www.pagbrasil.com/lp/pix-for-international-travelers...

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

#129
I m wondering why they are trying to build a competing product rather than a successor product?

The digital euro could be a good candidate here and it also aspires to have cash-like privacy features. It's also mentioned in the article as separate and hopefully non overlapping product.

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

#130
post #128
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I don't know that the problem is sophisticated, but it's certainly complex [1]. It's a bit of both in terms of complexity and defending a moat, which all businesses do, including, and especially European ones. And companies like Visa, Mastercard, Ame…

> Because at a minimum you want American tourist dollars and Europe isn't going to start issuing European credit cards to Americans or other citizens around the world. It could be handled similarly to how tourists in Brazil can now use Brazil's Pix payment system. One way Brazil handles it is with 3rd party digital wallets that tourists can install on their phones such as Wallbit [1]. Another way is with 3rd party se…

Well, you could do that, but that sucks. Not just in philosophy (I don't want to download your crappy app - this applies to any country) but also in practice.

Thankfully Americans at least have enough purchasing power that the demand for convenience - just take my money with this card will keep us away from bad solutions in Europe.

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