21–30 of 242 posts
God I wish the US had a digital payment system that we could all basically agree on. Having Apple Pay vs Google Pay vs Zelle vs Paypal vs Venmo vs all the others is annoying as hell.
Wero shows that marketing is everything. It's just regular bank transactions with a much larger fee. We could have had EPC QR codes and similar completely free technologies instead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think the name is that bad. iDeal sounds very dated to me as a native English speaker.
How would you even pronounce wero as a native English speaker? We - ro? Wer-o? At least iDeal was unambiguous.
It's built on the excellent SEPA system, which standardized bank transfers and "Lastschrift" in Europe. SEPA itself got a huge upgrade last year with mandatory instant transfers that cannot cost more than standard transfers between European checking accounts.
Both of those allowed Wero to happen as a final abstract top layer, meaning: the UX of sending money to an email address with the security and convenience of bank transfers. And everything is built collaboratively on top of European banking infrastructure.
No account necessary and no private american conglomerates can delete that account.
And before some says: "Well, now the government controls everything!": They already did, since... Ever. Now its one less entity with that access and one that can be (hopefully) controlled and changed by a majority.
iDeal is amazing and it's great it's coming to the rest of Europe, even if they gave it a worse name. Here in the Benelux it's the go-to payment option for ecommerce. I think this will be a much bigger threat to Visa and Mastercard than the oft-promised digital Euro.
Not just the American card networks but also a threat to the US Dollar as the reserve currency and the power it gives to the USA
Hence why USA is unhappy with Brazil over their Pix system
This type of thing (scan QR code) is how basically all payments were done when I was recently in China, via wechat or alipay (either you show your QR code for big shops, or scan their QR code for small shops / vendors. They can just print them out if they want and hang a copy). I found it superior to other systems I've used in basically every way. Particularly for small market stalls -- I scan their QR code, I enter…
(Basically they have a reasonable price showing and when you pay with a credit card you see your banks charges you a huge amount. It can be as simple as in Mexico $ is used for pesos so if the merchant actually charges you USD that's 20x or so rip off).
But... This isn't mutually exclusive, why can't I set a price on my smartphone when I pay by contactless?
The other benefit is that there QR codes are bank transfers. Which have substantially less recourse and less rights for the consumer. Probably doesn't matter for a $10 sandwich but still significant.
This type of thing (scan QR code) is how basically all payments were done when I was recently in China, via wechat or alipay (either you show your QR code for big shops, or scan their QR code for small shops / vendors. They can just print them out if they want and hang a copy). I found it superior to other systems I've used in basically every way. Particularly for small market stalls -- I scan their QR code, I enter…
Wero shows that marketing is everything. It's just regular bank transactions with a much larger fee. We could have had EPC QR codes and similar completely free technologies instead.
Wero’s website says they don’t charge fees So who is charging the fees?
Usually the fee is on merchant (and it's few % depending on region regulations etc.) Payment providers such as Wero are doing direct bank transfer, which is usually fee-less, but then they can afford to put a on-merchant fee that's much lower than what credit card companies are charging.
Thus the model is win-win-win: Consumer doesn't pay more, Merchant pays less, and Wero gets their share.
Wero shows that marketing is everything. It's just regular bank transactions with a much larger fee. We could have had EPC QR codes and similar completely free technologies instead.
Wero’s website says they don’t charge fees So who is charging the fees?
[0] https://www.mollie.com/growth/wero-payment-guide#:~:text=How...
[1] https://www.bnpparibasfortis.be/en/public/faq/how-much-does-...