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Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment

lesnumeriques.com

181–190 of 811 posts

Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds a little authoritarian for many Western countries, I imagine.

I trust my government (Switzerland) way more to do the thing that is right for the people and the law then some private company that has the primary goal of making money. It doesn't mean that governments don't make mistakes but the primary goal is to serve its people. That is what government is for in a functioning democracy. A functioning government is of the people for the people.

> I trust my government (Switzerland)

I do, too. I’m not sure I trust Brussels.

Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment

#182
post #60
post #43

Wero is basically an EU-wide version of the Dutch iDeal system, which in my opinion is the gold standard of how internet payment should work. I shouldn't have to fill in any card numbers on the site of the merchant (which is unsafe). Instead, the payment should redirect me to my bank, where I authorize the payment through my own bank's security system. I've always been annoyed by the need to type in sensitive card in…

PIX from Brazil is even better, to be honest. But this is a big improvement over online CC payment. I lived in the NL and Brazil, so I can compare the two, and while iDEAL is pretty good, PIX is easier to understand, explain, and deal with. PIX has more variants, you can use it for recurrent payment, split payments, financing, cashout and almost all things a CC can do nowadays. I would say Tikkie is almost as good an…

Nah, BLIK from Poland was there earlier and is in many ways better, Wero was unfairly lobbied for by the old European guard, so most of Eastern Europe walked away.

They are now hesitantly joining Wero, supporting it only to downplay and to lobby ECB for an API platform and not for a product.

Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment

#183
post #43

Wero is basically an EU-wide version of the Dutch iDeal system, which in my opinion is the gold standard of how internet payment should work. I shouldn't have to fill in any card numbers on the site of the merchant (which is unsafe). Instead, the payment should redirect me to my bank, where I authorize the payment through my own bank's security system. I've always been annoyed by the need to type in sensitive card in…

Most online merchants redirect me to my bank's web page when I enter my Visa credit card number. In theory it should be possible to have a card number that by itself is useless and always requires an external confirmation?

with a mastercard from a swedish bank that is the experience that i get. all online transactions pop up a page from my back with qr code, this is authenticated through an app that shows me the transaction details and requires pin confirmation.

Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment

#184
post #43

Wero is basically an EU-wide version of the Dutch iDeal system, which in my opinion is the gold standard of how internet payment should work. I shouldn't have to fill in any card numbers on the site of the merchant (which is unsafe). Instead, the payment should redirect me to my bank, where I authorize the payment through my own bank's security system. I've always been annoyed by the need to type in sensitive card in…

> iDeal system, which in my opinion is the gold standard of how internet payment should work

Is it? I see it more as an underwhelming fix for SEPA Direct Debit's inability to verify payment data synchronously.

* iDeal doesn't support basic features like pre-authorization. I'm not even sure if it supports setting up a payment agreement without triggering an immediate payment at all (pretty sure it didn't, when we integrated it a couple of years ago).

* It hands over the customer's IBAN, which isn't really that much safer than a credit card number, since any merchant can trigger a SEPA Direct Debit using it. While you can trigger a chargeback, that requires you to actively monitor for fraudulent transactions, which a decent system wouldn't allow in the first place.

* iDeal recurring payments are SEPA Direct Debit, with all their downsides, like taking days to confirm and a payment that fails due to insufficient funds in the customer's bank account resulting in a significant fee the merchant has to pay (and will probably pass on to the customer).

And Wero has one of the worst, least informative websites I have ever seen. So it's really hard to figure out how it works, and what it supports.

Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it comes down to who you would trust more - your own government which you have some control over via elections or some (potentially multinational) corporation which you have exactly zero control over?

It's the other way around. You have choice with a company, and people can switch provider very quickly if they are bad. You have very, very coarse-grained control with the government every few years.

Ok, I choose to not use Visa/Mastercard in the US, and I want to subscribe to some saas. What do I do now? Or do you mean "choice" as in "you can always choose not the breathe or eat"?

Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment

#186
post #49
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ahahah! so true. those names are silly. also, French and Spanish can already send money for free via IBAN / SEPA

That's not the point at all. Currently I'm using paypal to send money to friends when we split dinner or share other costs. I'd like to use a similar European service instead and not go through a ceremony to open my banking app, initiate transfer, write the recipient's IBAN, confirm and wait a day for the transfer to take place.

I split bills via Revolut?

I could do it via IBAN and it would mostly (not to all banks) instant.

My bank also allows payments via a phone number now. Tested once and it works, but everyone's used to Revolut for bill splitting here in Romania.

Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment

#187
That's a pretty optimistic take. I'm a bit more cautious myself: The motivation is obviously higher than ever, but it's hardly a done deal.

There are still many obstacles ahead: Contactless payments (Apple does not provide any card emulation NFC access to the Apple Watch, for example, and only limited access to iPhones), chargeback handling, offline payments (a recent priority of the EU under the larger umbrella of digital resiliency), and of course the network effect of the existing millions of terminals, ATMs, and cards in the field.

Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment

#188

Banks in Spain, Italy and Portugal are joining what this article describes as France’s Wero system [1]. («L'initiative française Wero».) Focus this year is on P2P transfers. Commerce is targeted for 2027. Given EuroPA has done a token amount of transactions to date, I’m not sure anyone should hold their breaths. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment)

> Given EuroPA has done a token amount of transactions to date, I’m not sure anyone should hold their breaths. The Spanish equivalent (Bizum) is merging into Wero is not a token use case, it's absolutely massive here. The absolute standard for peer-to-peer payments, more than 30 million users (>65% of the population), and they already launched contactless terminals for in-person commercial payments this month ( https…

Indeed Bizum is almost default now here in Spain, and for instance the equivalent in Sweden, Swish, is also almost default there. Went trekking into a national park, and the rangers will leave a number to Swish a bit of money if you want to use the fire pits; no other payment means.

Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment

#189
post #11
post #4

I'm pretty sure American gov won't react kindly

I'm pretty sure European governments know that and are prepared to deal with the temper tantrum.

Which country in Europe is prepared to deal with anything? They can’t even break away from the country currently invading them

Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment

#190
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a 3DSecure system for existing Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. After typing your card numbers, the transaction doesn’t immediately go through but you are also redirected to the bank’s system. Banks can ask you to use a hardware token, an app, or any other second factor to approve the transaction. It’s a shame that this system isn’t ubiquitous for the rest of us not in EU.

> After typing your card numbers Yes, but the whole point of Wero is that you don't have to type in a bunch of info that can be easily stolen. With Wero (and many other international solutions), you just scan a code with your phone, and your banking app handles the transactions. The existing legacy solutions are just duct tape on an existing system.

If 3DS and chip + PIN card usage were ubiquitous, the value of a stolen card number and even card would be zero, and this entire problem would go away.

Unfortunately, legacy deployments have just proven too pervasive to effect real change, even with substantial incentives, especially in early card adopting markets such as the US.

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