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Would be nice of the EU to provide a digital payment service quasi free of charge - without commercial provider's typical predatory fees and other costs. And don't counter with "privacy" .. it's not like all the American companies already have to provide backend access to their data to the NSA and other 3 letter agencies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a little shocked that of all the comments so far, no one has mentioned the financial risk borne by this whole value chain. OP is operating as if it's just a debit system moving money from one account to another but: - For many consumers there isn't sufficient money in the account to settle all the one-time and ongoing transactions they are liable for -- credit cards are giving you a revolving loan, there's risk i…
They are taking a percentage point or two on the entire consumer payment system. I think there's plenty of money to back all the activity. Especially if there are central banks willing to back them
Visa/MC make about 0.1-0.13% of each transaction, not a 1-2%. The rest of the interchange (the vast majority) goes to the issuing bank.
Whatever they come up with, I hope it doesn't tie you to a Google or Apple smartphone. Can't we have cards for this? In Spain, for example, to use Bizum, you need either an Android/iOS smartphone (and for the Android case, as you use it from your bank's app, it would typically require some Google security assurances - so no Huawei phones allowed, for example) or logging into your bank's website and use Bizum from the…
I would also hope so, that is the entire point. The reason they are scrambling right now is because Starlink just shut off all of Russia. Because Starlink was so cheap and easy (and stable for the last 4 years of the war), a lot of people in Russia stopped using any other form of internet access. And while all of Europe is happy to see Russia go away, they are concerned that the same can be done to them at a whim by any number of American companies. So they are trying to quickly create alternatives to anything American including software providers like Microsoft 360.
As for credit cards, it is not as if there is something intrinsically American in credit card processing. They can just as easily create a new system that uses the same protocols as Visa and Mastercard.
Having your entire economy dependent on a company you don't control in a country you don't control was considered acceptable for as long as a concept of "allies" existed. That is not the world we are living in right now.
Would be nice of the EU to provide a digital payment service quasi free of charge - without commercial provider's typical predatory fees and other costs. And don't counter with "privacy" .. it's not like all the American companies already have to provide backend access to their data to the NSA and other 3 letter agencies.
Uhm, the EU already has free instant SEPA transfers? I use it regularly, sadly not all EU banks support it (smaller ones sometimes have issues and have to resort to standard oldschool 2-day transfer, but they are also free).
SEPA instant transfers aren't guaranteed instant as they might still be withheld for fraud checks.
Like the article mentioned many EU countries have their own payment systems. The challenge is not to build something from the scratch but rather to make existing solutions interoperable. The first talks about cross-border integrations started many years ago but they went very slowly. However, some work is being done, just a week ago a first transfer was done from Spanish Bizum to Polish Blik.
People here don’t understand that Visa and Mastercard get only a small part of the fee. Most of it goes to the issuer and the acquiring banks.
So Wero is not a credit card, but something more like Venmo? How is it supposed to replace Visa and Mastercard?
The concept of a physical card is obsolete. That North Americans and western Europeans for a good part still use them is just stickiness of the infrastructure, and habits. Developing countries have mostly leapfrogged to total contactless payments. In South Aast Asia, you typically scan a QR code and approve a payment from your own phone. Far less fraud as a result. Nobody is able to touch your card, you don't have on…
Who returns your money to you if you purchased something on mail order with this, and it turned out to be fraud?
Or, an easy way for vendors or car rental agencies to block a set amount when you rent a car.
However, all of these things can be built and I hope Wero gets the time to grow into a full alternative to US-based payment systems.
Not because I want them to fail, but because this market can use a bit of competition and new ideas.
Though at least in Germany we have "girocards/EC-cards" that are not owned by Visa/Mastercard. Some banks are phasing them out in favor of a Visa/Mastercard debit card.
So maybe this is just an attempt to make Wero a bit stronger in comparison to PayPal. AFAIK Wero does not replace a credit card.
Even putting aside issue of geopolitics, it's quite baffling to me that every country besides China and Russia are paying ~0.2% "sales tax" to corporate America.
Not 0.2% Visa: 1.3% to 2.3% Mastercard: 1.5% to 2.6% Mastercard: 2.3% to 3.5% Nothing precise as it depends on whether that's debit vs credit cards, and the type of card. Also volume related and what the bank may subsidize, or take on top.