641–650 of 1001 posts
wow, so not even all of the European Union, not even all Eurozone countries, hmm
I get their SEPA system but do they really not have a functioning credit network between consumers and merchants?
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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.
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…
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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…
I shouldn't have to pay for your usury economy if I'm using cash. If that were really the issue, these companies would have no problems with businesses charging different prices or offering discounts for cash.
I have a recent background as a member of the Senior Management of one of the largest banks in Europe (8 years stint).
I worked in IT - and build the only successful platform for financial services done in-house and to ever make it as a standard not because management tried to force people, no because it solved customer's problem (external and internal customers aka employees).
I don't buy any of these EU is going fully independently. EU's IT isn't capable of doing this. No way ever ever.
I will 100% of the time bet against it. I saw so many things, experienced so many things - and no way is there anyone out there in Europe who to this day simply can acknowledge and appreciate the marvelous work and evolution that for example Google took or any other startup to leading global business like Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and so on.
Even IBM's mainframe: if you do not understand the very problem they solve - don't talk about "independence from X".
There is no successful startup from Europe, that has any results like the mentioned. All have to do with IT, all went from idea to what they are now.
And Europe now wants to do what?
All my fellow European's here boasting around: I feel sorry for you. All the "Let's build our own Google" (Google search) folks that predated the other independence stories like this here simply disqualify themselves the moment the say out loud such sentences.
Read 5 books about Engineering at Google, read the HTML5 spec by searching for Ian Hickson, go to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA - and tell me that EU is going well in IT independence in taking a totally different approach, ignoring every and any circumstance and context the mentioned companies had, using design by committee, state dictated orders, establishing standards by enforcing them by law instead of evolution and being the best there is.
Good luck, we will see how it went.
And no, building something that looks somewhat okish from the outside, but is utterly crap inside - we talk about, excuse me my corporate language I was penetrated with, "best in class world leading number one" apps that leave any comparable solutions in the dust - just as Google, Apple, Microsoft etc. did.
If you cannot win in free markets - you declare victory by misusing regulation. That's cheap and well, socialism.
All of you will beg that all the systems and providers will still do business with you after years of trashing them.
Are Mastercard etc. awesome? Are they objectionable? Of course - but trashing them, boasting you will easily beat them while having the double standard on relying on them freely is disgusting.
All EU patriots: Throw away your iPhones, deinstall all the US apps - use at least existing Open Source alternatives. Cancel your Netflix, Microsoft Office subscription - do it.
Good luck anyway. After all, you are doing a live experiment on the head of the people forced to live with a minorities decision.
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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.
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>Or today with Russia and Ukraine situation. Sure is convenient that we keep having more and more crisis and boogiemen that governments can leverage to deflect accountability and bypass the wishes of the population, for our own good of course.
>Why do you think Germans supported to tie themselves to Russia's gas and destroy their nuclear power.
You see you might get called a bot, Russian troll, or MAGA a whole lot less, if you didn't pull out ALL the topics those groups are playing at once. There is plenty to criticize about the EU institutions, but man that is a very odd focus.
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…
By the way, since you wondered, it seems to be
> built around the digital wallet Wero
and wikipedia says its a mobile payments method. I hope not. I hope it's rather an interface/spec.
(On a side note, I also hope individual countries of EU ensure that those spec leaves an ability for them to continue internally or even externally if rest of the EU decide to cut someone off or so.)
Even putting aside issue of geopolitics, it's quite baffling to me that every country besides China and Russia are paying ~0.2% "sales tax" to corporate America.
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…
An Indian friend of mine, constantly raves about their UPI system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface It sounds a lot like what they're discussing.