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

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

#441

Post by digiown » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 9:48 PM UTC

xyzzy123 wrote: post #431

miki123211 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an anti-brute-force mechanism. It's not for you, it's for all the other accounts that an unattested phone (or a bot posing as an unattested phone that just stole somebody's credentials via some 0-day data exfiltration exploit) may be trying to access. Sure, banks could probably build a mechanism that lets some users opt out of this, just as they could add a Klingon localization to their apps. There just isn't en…

If you work on mobile apps you will notice that full attestation is too slow to put in the login path. [This might be better than it used to be, now in 2026]. I don't think a good security engineer would rely on atty as "front line" anti brute force control since bypasses are not that rare. But yeah you might incorporate it into the flow. Just like captchas, rate limiting, fingerprints etc and all the other controls…

> total big tech capture of computing platforms

Correct. And the end of ownership, privacy, and truth too. If something can betray you on someone else's orders, it's not yours in the first place. You'll own nothing and if you aren't happy, good luck living in the woods.

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

#442

Post by Cyph0n » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 9:49 PM UTC

joe_mamba wrote: post #399

Cyph0n wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So far, the European citizens are very privacy senstive. In some areas, sure - like GDPR. In other areas, absolutely not - like chat control. As another commenter pointed out, it seems as if government mandated privacy intrusion is OK, while violations by corporations are quickly shutdown. It’s like the opposite of how it works here in the US.

>it seems as if government mandated privacy intrusion is OK Once you give people an outside boogieman(Putin, Trump, Covids, etc) or a self inflicted false flag crisis(surge in violent crime rates for example) to shake them up to their core and put the fear in them, you can then easily sell your intrusion of privacy in their lives and extension of the police state, as the necessary solution that protects them. When yo…

I agree 100%. Europe is just ahead of us for the time being, but our turn is soon approaching...

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

#443

Post by pyrolistical » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 9:49 PM UTC

littlecranky67 wrote: post #353

Whenever people say Bitcoin has no usecase, this is exactly my usecase. Of course, only in conjunction with Lightning (a layer 2 solution building on Bitcoin with anonymity and instant transaction settlement). Censorship-free, no relying on third parties, free and open source software to make and receive payments. Yes, I know, bitcoin is too volatile. The reason that it is volatile, is because it has almost no adopti…

What about the fraud protection offered by credit cards?

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

#444

Post by storus » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 9:51 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #164

severino wrote: post #135

Whatever they come up with, I hope it doesn't tie you to a Google or Apple smartphone. Can't we have cards for this? In Spain, for example, to use Bizum, you need either an Android/iOS smartphone (and for the Android case, as you use it from your bank's app, it would typically require some Google security assurances - so no Huawei phones allowed, for example) or logging into your bank's website and use Bizum from the…

On Portugal we have the Multibanco network, which already provided Internet like services for buying stuff on the terminals and eventually graduated to have online payments as well, however only in Portugal. Likewise, in Germany we can have SEPA for most stuff. And in Greece there is Viva. Problem is getting something that actually works across all European countries.

SEPA gets blocked immediately when you try to buy something expensive, like a top-end graphics card (8k+).

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

#445

Post by hermanzegerman » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 9:52 PM UTC

KellyCriterion wrote: post #198

ncruces wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever they come up with, I hope it doesn't tie you to a Google or Apple smartphone. Even if it does, Google won't be taking a cut from it. Also, it's then much easier to provide a mobile web version, or something else. My country's internal system also sells a bracelet for contactless payments, and there are obviously payment cards. Once there's a mandatory standard, it's much more likely competition will show u…

What would Google prevent from taking a similar cut as Apple is taking?

Digital Markets Act, also Apple nearly lost their payment monopoly in Germany as powerful banks lobbied for a law forcing them to open up. It was passed, but then they didn't want to use it. If I would guess, Apple offered them preferential conditions to not have a precedent.

https://financefwd.com/de/sparkassen-apple-nfc/

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

#446

Post by digiown » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 9:53 PM UTC

miohtama wrote: post #386

Archelaos wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The odds are very low. It all depents on the people. So far, the European citizens are very privacy senstive. The European institutions are characterized by a huge devision of power. There is no chance that European instutitions can impose their will against a considerable majority of people. If people turn away from liberal democracy, that's another matter. But then everything is lost anyway.

> There is no chance that European instutitions can impose their will against a considerable majority of people The EU commission just passed chat control to have government mandated software in every phone

It's substantially neutered from the original proposal, with most of the scary parts taken out. I'd count that as a win as far as how antidemocratic the EU commission is.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/after-years-controvers...

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

#447

Post by folmar » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 9:53 PM UTC

cferry wrote: post #361

Beretta_Vexee wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more taboo to talk about revolving credit card than crack addiction for a french. I don't know a bank that offer them, even the shady online bank.

Historically, these have been issued by "consumer credit" specialized banks like Sofinco; and retail chains ("carte Aurore"); traditional banks would seldom advertise them, if offered at all. Things have been changing a bit in recent years. Since the "debit" and "credit" nature of the card is now written on them, French folks have started to request "credit" ones for travelling (to rent a car for instance). My unders…

> My understanding is that for car rental purposes, anything using Visa/MC (and not a national debit network like Visa Debit in the US) will work, it doesn't actually need to be backed by a revolving credit.

Many companies will refuse all debit cards, or all cards with "electronic use only" restriction, at least for the deposit, irrespective of the payment network involved.

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

#448

Post by pndy » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 9:56 PM UTC

tamimio wrote: post #418

trinix912 wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have had these apps in various EU countries for quite a while and it's been fine. You can get a prepaid SIM from a grocery store and register it with them, and so on. You can always SEPA transfer the money if you don't want to use this. It's also more convenient than giving out an opaque UUID to your friend to transfer you money or something similar. The bigger problem I see with this is it being one more service…

> You can get a prepaid SIM from a grocery store and register it with them After you provide your gov ID https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/sim-card-regist... So now this phone number is tied to your gov ID and bank account, amazing design of a single point of failure based on a broken protocol (GSM).

I don't know how the procedure looks like in wherever-you-are but in EU phone number is required to either have a call from agent or to receive verification codes from text messages if bank you've pick offers opening an account on your own. Either way, bank gets all your personal data - you are not anonymous for them.

And the SIM registration requirement in nearly every EU country exists for 10 years now - in my case it was as simple as replying with code to operator's message because they had my personal information already for over a decade. There was a grace period after which unregistered SIM cards become dead - the requirement was dubious but you had to comply in order to call, text. There were "solutions" I've bumped on in depths of the Internet but neither felt serious nor safe.

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

#449

Post by hermanzegerman » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 9:56 PM UTC

eastbayjake wrote: post #97

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'm a little shocked that of all the comments so far, no one has mentioned the financial risk borne by this whole value chain. OP is operating as if it's just a debit system moving money from one account to another but: - For many consumers there isn't sufficient money in the account to settle all the one-time and ongoing transactions they are liable for -- credit cards are giving you a revolving loan, there's risk i…

You know here in Europe you can just overdraw your bank account anytime without bullshit fees, just with interest that is still way lower than average US Credit Card Interest (around 11%)?

Also bank transfers are easy, instant and free.

> For many _businesses_ managing cash flow is existential -- as merchants they want to be paid as quickly as possible, but as B2B customers they want to have 30-60 days to sell the input goods they've purchased so they can pay for them upstream. There is a premium for that flexibility that gets reflected in processing fees.

Yes those businesses use a bank loan for this, no need for a credit card again.

> If you want to switch the world to a debit-based system where economic transactions are limited by cash on hand, I'd argue that's a poorer and less dynamic world than the one we're operating in today.

Thinking that the world doesn't have credit just because they use debit cards is one of the most idiotic things I've read today

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

#450

Post by sajithdilshan » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 9:57 PM UTC

Even if somehow EU is able to pull this off it would be a nightmare in terms of user experience. I live in Germany and this is how I would imagine it would work base on my experience in Germany.

1. You first need to install an app (because you want to use tap to pay)

2. Then you need to download another app to authenticate the first app

3. But to set up the 2nd app you need to wait for an actual physical mail which contains a code.

4. Then you set up the 2nd app, but then again it asks for you to do a KYC using your Id Card.

5. Now you need to download another app to do the KYC using your Id, but it asks for another code which you receive by physical mail when you got your Id years ago, but you have no idea where that mail or code is, now you have to request for another code and wait like 2 weeks till you get a physical mail with that code....

.... and the story goes on.