As an EU Citizen I do not want to switch from a proprietary fintech to another, I want FREEDOM. So, I have nothing against FLOSS cryptos, but I see exactly no reason to choose a company instead of another, especially given the record of EU illegal size of funds for anyone the EU Commission dislike, not differently than USA or Canada.
Wero – Digital payment wallet, made in Europe
121–130 of 141 posts
Re: Wero – Digital payment wallet, made in Europe
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not a wallet (the name is a bit confusing). Wero (like iDEAL, which it is partly based on), is an online payment system directly backed by your bank account. This is an app that uses the Wero system for doing P2P payments (like Tikkie in The Netherlands). Most likely, Wero (like iDEAL) will also support alternative apps for P2P payments. Also, Wero will support in-store payments in the future, making Google P…
I think most/many banks had their own nfc tap-to-pay solution before Google/Apple Pay came along. Any idea why the banks chose to give that up?
On Smartcards yes, maybe Android, but certainly not on iPhones. On iOS, it's only been possible to implement alternatives to Apple Pay since 17.4 (2024), and only in Europe (EEA).
Re: Wero – Digital payment wallet, made in Europe
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cards are reliant on US companies -> Visa / Mastercard. The European Payment Initiative wants to remove reliance on the US. Perhaps there can be a ECB payment rail/network that would support cardlike payments too.
So it's mainly a nationalism thing? Is that enough to displace the superior option?
It's not really nationalism since this is a European effort across multiple countries. But for all of them, it will improve the national security posture.
The only superior aspect of Visa/Mastercard payments is that they are more widely accepted, and that's something that can be changed.
Re: Wero – Digital payment wallet, made in Europe
#124Every once in a while, I check it out, and every time I am confused or disappointed. Don't we already have SEPA transfers? What benefits would this add? Why are they completely unable to pitch it to someone who's curious and receptive to the idea?
Since the other guy wasn't particularly helpful, i'll try to add some context (mostly through my knowledge of iDeal, the Dutch payment system which Wero is based on).
You're right that it's a bit confusing, as Wero's marketing is mostly focused on P2P transfer usecases, ie like US's Venmo/Cashapp, which as you note we can already do with SEPA transfers. Wero does have a small benefit in that case, as it's slightly more secure (you don't need to share your bank account, and there's a dedicated app that most Western Europeans will soon be familiar with).
The bigger benefit I think is as a unified e-commerce solution. While Wero is not directly an EU initiative, it's still supported by the EU commission. In general a good thing to keep in mind when evaluating EU financial/economic news is that one of the main things the EU tries to do is strengthen and protect their "single market": they want to make the flow of commerce within EUs borders as seamless as possible.
Having a unified ecommerce payment solution, so that you can eg just as easily order goods from German webshops as a Frenchman as you can from a French one (barring shipping etc) is in the EUs interest. Of course it's also in the banks that put forward this initiative's interest.
But, speaking as a consumer: this rules! iDeal is really nice, much nicer to use than credit cards or PayPal imo. I think it's easy to see why you would prefer a dedicated payment system in ecommerce rather than plain SEPA transfers (which most shops don't support) or credit cards, but in case that's not clear:
- Faster checkouts
- Don't need to share bank account numbers/sensitive credit card info
- Fees are much lower than credit cards (at least for iDeal its fractions of a cent per transaction: https://ideal.nl/en/ideal-fees)
- (Coming) built in support for subscriptions
Hope that gave a bit of an idea!
Re: Wero – Digital payment wallet, made in Europe
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the neobanks I think it's very easy to explain: Their customers need Visa or Mastercard. No Visa/Mastercard? No retail customers. It's as simple as that. Any other payment scheme is a bonus thing that can be put on the backlog.
That's a chicken/egg problem. It's going to be really easy to circumvent. Just make an EU card provider and mandate that it has to be accepted everywhere in the EU. Then users will want it and a critical mass will be created for vendors outside the EU to accept it as well.
EPI initially wanted to become a card scheme but quickly gave up.
Plastic cards are yesterday's battle, many national schemes exist in large European countries (CB in France, Girocard in Germany, ...) and would be hard to overhaul.
Focusing on mobile payments makes sense. Once a critical mass is reached (Austria, Benelux, France, Germany) there's a clear incentive for other players to work on interoperability, even if the pricing structure might be very different.
Re: Wero – Digital payment wallet, made in Europe
#126At first glance this seems similar to swish, but for a different part of Europe. Is it? I wonder if there will be interoperability between them, that would be pretty sweet
The goal here is to provide a payments system that works across all of the EU. Right now, it's not there but hopefully it will get there eventually.
Basically it's a swish/ideal etc equivalent for the entire EU.
Re: Wero – Digital payment wallet, made in Europe
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you miss the whole part where op talks about using your physical card as an alternative?
who's paying for the card reader at home?
My bank is. It is part of their service. Obviously I pay a service charge, but the card reader is not charged separately. The card reader serves a purpose for the bank as well, because it acts as a back-up for when people lose their smartphone (by stupidity or theft), or when their app is having issues.
Re: Wero – Digital payment wallet, made in Europe
#128I would pay for a solution that aggregates these alternative payment systems that aren't tied to VISA and Mastercard and their rules.
Wero, RuPay, WeChat Pay / AliPay, Crypto (through 3p like coinbase or directly), etc.
And handles them in nice and unified API, with hooks for subscriptions, etc. (taking into account that some payment methods do not support recurring payments, so there should be some hook to send an email to the customer to renew manually, etc.)
Re: Wero – Digital payment wallet, made in Europe
#129There is Taler already https://www.taler.net/
Taler is cool but different. Wero is about moving money from your bank account to someone else’s bank account using a phone number to identify the recipient. It is very similar to many other mobile money systems. What make it different is that it is pan European Taler is about moving money without necessarily using a bank account
Wero is a long way from pan-European. It operates in three countries so far. We already have a similar thing in the Nordics (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland) called Vipps that uses one's phone number. You can also use it to pay in shops much as one uses Google Wallet or Apple. It's been in operation in Norway for over ten years.
Re: Wero – Digital payment wallet, made in Europe
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a chicken/egg problem. It's going to be really easy to circumvent. Just make an EU card provider and mandate that it has to be accepted everywhere in the EU. Then users will want it and a critical mass will be created for vendors outside the EU to accept it as well.
EPI initially wanted to become a card scheme but quickly gave up. Plastic cards are yesterday's battle, many national schemes exist in large European countries (CB in France, Girocard in Germany, ...) and would be hard to overhaul. Focusing on mobile payments makes sense. Once a critical mass is reached (Austria, Benelux, France, Germany) there's a clear incentive for other players to work on interoperability, even i…
Plastic cards no but they are also the underlying layer of digital PoS payments of course. They also use credit card numbers and infrastructure. This is the problem. Every time I buy something in a shop it goes through an American company.