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

europeanbusinessmagazine.com

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

#711

Post by lovelesscx »

Coeur wrote: post #165

Not sure Wero will succeed, but European country-specific mobile payment systems like Swish (Sweden), Vipps (rest of Scandinavia), Bizum (Spain), iDeal (Netherlands), Bluecode (Germany and Austria), Twint (Switzerland), BLIK (Poland) etc. are also working on interconnectivity under the EMPSA association. Combined they already have 110+ million users. Wero is like a monolith, while EMPSA is more like mobile phone roam…

One problem I see with some of the EMPSA systems, is that if you're a developer and - if you don't have a company behind you, you're pretty much shit out of luck trying to integrate any of these payment solutions.

That have at least been my experience, trying to integrate Vipps in Scandinavia.

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

#712

Post by pyrale »

friendzis wrote: post #685
joe_mamba wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No one should be required to carry an attacker-controlled tracking device What about being required to carry a your-own-government-controlled tracking device? Because the US or Chine government can't harm me in Europe via the data they collect from me, But the EU authorities can if they want to, so naturally I fear them more if they were the ones hoovering my data. What are the odds they're using this on-shore tech…

> What are the odds they're using this on-shore tech grab to implement their own domestic version of China's social credit score system, to easily get data on their own citizens who commit "wrong-think", without having to through the effort to twist the arm of US entities every time they want to do that? What are the odds that once shut down "chat control" will come up under a new name?

> without having to through the effort to twist the arm of US entities every time they want to do that?

Right now, it's more like US corpos are try to twist the arm of EU governments [1][2], pushing heavy propaganda to manipulate our elections [3], allying with the US government to do so. And the US government has been threatening EU govts with invasion [4], leveraging US corpos to harm lawful individuals doing their jobs in the EU [5], and sanctioning elected officials for performing their duties [6], or threatened to [7].

Sure, there's an hypothetical risk of the EU turning sour. On the other hand, when it comes to US corpos, the risk has materialized.

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly930y90lro [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0589g0dqq7o [3]: https://www.politico.eu/article/twitter-faces-renewed-scruti... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_crisis [5]: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/11/19/n... [6]: https://www.brusselstimes.com/1931733/eu-parliament-blasts-u... [7]: https://www.politico.eu/article/us-accused-threats-eu-diplom...

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

#713

Post by stubish »

I don't see an alternative to Visa and Mastercard being discussed in the article. I just see ways of making bank transfers easier. Banks generally don't provide ways to dispute transactions, which is why fraudsters generally use bank transfer mechanisms. Once your money leaves your account, it is possibly gone, and once it leaves the country it is definitely gone. Banks here are now inserting delays on transfers in an attempt to combat the problem. Without a consumer focused and consumer friendly way of disputing transactions, consumers will keep using Visa, Mastercard and Paypal.

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

#714

Post by rob74 »

the_fall wrote: post #577
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.

35 years ago, a good chunk of the current EU was under a Soviet-imposed totalitarian rule. Spain was a dictatorship until 1975. And it's been just 80 years since WWII. It always boggles my mind that most Europeans are absolutely convinced that nothing like that could ever happen again. Meanwhile, many people in the US are convinced that the government will be coming for them any minute now.

> Meanwhile, many people in the US are convinced that the government will be coming for them any minute now.

It's a bit ironic that most of those people voted for Trump, who is now doing exactly that. But I guess they think it's ok as long as the government is coming for others, not for them (at least not yet)...

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

#715

Post by utopiah »

No mention of GNU Taler (cf https://www.taler.net ) which is a bit of shame, especially knowing that "The NGI TALER project is funded under Horizon Europe (Pilots for the Next Generation Internet) with the aim of bringing GNU Taler to market across Europe." cf https://www.taler.net/en/ngi-taler.html

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

#716

Post by juliangmp »

nottorp wrote: post #702

Item one, that has been mentioned a lot of times in this discussion, is that a payment system that is independent of Visa/MC but is dependent on US based smartphones is about as useless. Item two is convenience. All these systems are "faster wire transfers". I don't really see the point of them when you can already do instant IBAN or even phone number based transfers. What they do not have is a line of credit backing…

I never understood the credit card thing Why would I want to spend money on loan by default? Why do the Americans do that all the time? What's the benefit?

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

#718

Post by Beretta_Vexee »

bjghknggkk wrote: post #176
pjmlp wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Show me a german webshop that supports modern payment methods. It usually old school bank transfers still.

On the other hand, I have already seen Germans complaining about the lack of possibility to buy train tickets by bank transfer.

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

#719

Post by Hikikomori »

ericmay wrote: post #408
jimnotgym wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you do not accept Visa and Mastercard you are not going to accept payments from all sorts of travellers (tourists, business people Who all stop in chain hotels, who will accept whatever you bring. > Xenophobic or anti-tourism? Anti-American tourism. I would say it is a mainstream opinion in Europe that American tourists are very annoying. Each country has its stereotypes about each other, usually stemming from W…

> Who all stop in chain hotels, who will accept whatever you bring. No, that's pretty much all European hotels actually. Hotels require credit cards for three reasons: 1. Security - if you leave the room a mess or destroyed there's an avenue for recourse. 2. To make more money - having a card on file for "incidentals" increases purchases from hotel guests. 3. Obtain payment - most people don't have the cash laying ar…

>Hotels require credit cards for three reasons

>Can you provide the name of a single hotel in Europe that doesn't take credit cards?

Holy goalpost.

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

#720

Post by rf15 »

digiown wrote: post #257
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…

This is really a human right issue. No one should be required to carry an attacker-controlled tracking device, especially not for interacting with the government. It's funny that the EU uses all this mobile attestation BS more than the US does. So much for sovereignty and consumer protection. No monopoly Google can build is as good as the government forcing you to accept their terms.

You are shifting the goal posts here - if we work by this argument, we will never achieve anything.
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