Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a European, I apologise for this arrogant reply considering how awful Europe has been as an ally over the past 50 years. I promise we will do better and am glad that we're finally trying for once. Now let's see your introspection (:
I mean, I’m British and I’ve done a fair amount of introspection about the actions of my own government over the years. I guess I should have included that in my reply in case someone else thought I was being hypocritical ?
Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment
521–530 of 811 posts
Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment
#522Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMHO, QR codes are a big step back from contactless and appeared in countries that didn't have widespread card adoption (e.g. China),
I don't think it's as big of an issue. China seems to be doing just fine when it comes to payment processing, and it's not the only country that works that way. From a software freedom perspective, I actually prefer QR codes. The UX of tapping a card is a little better (though it also opens up an avenue for theft) but I think every phone I've held the past ten years has had some way to quickly scan a QR code from the…
Again, China has what is has because people had phones but no payment cards, and they don't have "software freedom" either (whatever that means): They are fully bound to the two providers (Alipay and WeChat) which provide accounts to a point now that is much worse that my dependency or Visa or Mastercard here in Europe because most places now do not accept anything else.
What would make sense is for the likes of Wero to find a way to support contactless so people can just tap exactly as they do now. As said by another commenter, this does not require a physical card (and already exists with Apple Pay and Google Pay). Frankly, Wero is a solution looking for a problem at this point in time...
Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment
#523> A Frenchman using Wero will be able to transfer money to a Spanish friend on Bizum, with the same simplicity as a domestic payment. Have you seen the new money app? It's on Tubu. It's on Weeno. I'm on Dippy but my friend is on Poob. Poob has it for you.
For the uninitiated: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/poob-has-it-for-you
Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment
#524Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of these are puns/vague money sounding names in different languages. Wero has got to be the worst of the bunch, though. An awkward combination of "we" and "euro" combined with "vero". At least the other pooq/wolo/snivum/rumio like names aren't trying to hard.
As terrible as these are, at least they aren't just random short English words.
I hate random English words as company names. The other day I saw a company called Runway and it seemed interesting. Turns out there's quite a few companies called Runway or with a product called Runway, in the same industry.
Same with Bolt.
And I hate that Meta is now the company name so I can't look for meta stuff without also getting results about the company formerly known as Facebook.
Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
I think this focuses on the wrong issues. Tin my observation the main advantage of swiss system is the institution of the referendum. It means that every major decision is decided by the people. The elected government decides on the 99.9% other issues. The consequence of this system is that absolute majority of public discourse focuses on the issues and problems and not party affiliation. So e.g. the most consequenti…
You can't just ramrod a cultural output into other cultures and expect it to work or even expect different voting demographics who might have individually accepted direct democracy to continue to do so once put in a more diverse country. They tried democracy in Somalia and it worked worse by most measured metrics (including economic) than the xeer system of tribal hearings and decentralized governance for which their culture had adapted.
Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment
#526Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Like others said that choice is not really given in this case. Also with the government option it wouldn’t mean that you can’t still use other methods - for example in brasil credit card or cash work just fine, PIX is just one (very convenient) option.
The only exception I have found to consistently refuse PIX are some parking lots, and they refuse credit cards as well, accepting only cash, probably to hide their earnings.
Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment
#527Wero 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…
If you like Tikkie, you may like bunq as well.
This is kind of a problem with Wero though [1]:
> 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.
Why the ** am I constricted to using an app on Android or iOS. Ever heard of laptops? Windows? ChromeOS? macOS? Linux in general?
[1] https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599074240...
Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yesterday I was renewing my vehicle registration through my US states website. They offered a range of payment options using embedded options on the site. The direct bank account option had the lowest fee but when I tried it I was immediately scared of the security. They used a 3rd party bank account transfer provider that asked me what bank I used and looked like it was going to prompt me for my login info before it…
When using a government website, you were intimidated by the security posture of... Plaid? (Genuine question, maybe this was some other provider but Plaid's aggregator tool is the most common place I see this pop up in real life for ACH)
Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment
#529Re: Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment
#530Earlier quoted context omitted.
> should redirect me to my bank Eugh. The problem with that is that people don't verify they've actually been sent to their bank. An attacker will set up fake merchant sites, pay for Google ads to get your traffic, then have you log into your bank to pay for things. The more we normalise this, the quicker people will fall for it.
If they haven't been redirected to their bank, verifying with their mobile banking app using a QR code will not work.