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

lesnumeriques.com

521–530 of 811 posts

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

#521

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 ?

[deleted]

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

#522

Earlier 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…

But why would we want to take a step back when we have contactless right now? This makes little sense... It is worse UX and does not work (I think) for quick things like taking the bus or underground.

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
post #24
post #13

> 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

How mind-numbingly lame. Just another dime a dozen meme.

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

#524

Earlier 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.

And at least its not just a random letter in the English language too! (looking at you X)

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

#525

Earlier 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're completely ignoring that the Swiss system itself was a cultural output of that voting block, one they've kept remarkably insular, and with the remnants of this system going back to something like at least the middle ages. And then lucked out in many ways in WWII where most of Europe did not. The system didn't make the 90-95% euro voting block, the 90-95% white euro voting block made and support the Swiss direct democracy system itself in the context of finding it functional for their relatively insular society.

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

#526

Earlier 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.

Replying here to throwaway2037 because I can't reply directly to him, but yes, even most informal businesses accept PIX, including some random guy selling candy or bottled water at a stop signal.

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

#527
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…

iDeal can also be used for recurring payment. I set one up yesterday.

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

#528

Earlier 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)

If any site asks me for my bank login credentials, I run far away and start checking if I've made any security mistakes. So far Paypal is the only credentials I'll enter after a redirect.

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

#529
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it explains the "cat walks on keyboard" brand names for cheap Chinese goods on Amazon.

Nothing more reliable than good old SPLARGLE kitchenware

I got some of those from Ikea the other day, decent for the price

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

#530
post #474

Earlier 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.

So I have to get out my phone every time I use my credit card on my computer?
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