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Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

europeanbusinessmagazine.com

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Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#391

Post by Der_Einzige »

eastbayjake wrote: post #97
ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #8

I always find it entertaining to hear people try to argue that what these companies do is soooooo difficult and that's why they're valuable. It's just multiple computers keeping a balance. It's not complicated. No, these companies keep themselves in power not because they've solved such a difficult problem that nobody else can, but because they have a moat which they protect. Time to do away with these foreign entiti…

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…

Replacing EM dash with "--" doesn't take away LLM smell.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#392

Post by digiown »

joe_mamba wrote: post #388
digiown wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your bank (like most European ones) requires you to pass attestation to use their services. If you don't accept Google/Apple's terms, you can't access it without extreme difficulty.

I can always access my bank via a web browser or even in person at the teller at a branch somewhere, or as a last resort via snail mail from attorney, but most importantly even if I get locked out somehow by google, the account still runs and I won't be homeless as my salary and rent auto-payments keep going regardless if you can access it or not. How is this comparable to your government debanking you meaning that n…

It's less severe for sure, but I'd rather live without undue interference based on someone else's whims, unless I broke a law.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#393

Post by dmix »

miohtama wrote: post #30

This is the fourth attempt in two decades. Here is the short history of earlier attempts: https://x.com/moo9000/status/2006304163404128289 The difference this time is that Digital Euro is forced by ECB and control (and deposits) are taken away from banks.

The OP article itself explains the history

> The core problem has always been fragmentation. Each EU country developed its own domestic payment solution — Bizum in Spain, iDEAL in the Netherlands, Payconiq in Belgium, Girocard in Germany — but none could work across borders. A Belgian consumer buying from a Dutch retailer still needed Visa or Mastercard. National pride and competing banking interests repeatedly sabotaged attempts at unification.

> The network effect compounds the challenge. Merchants accept Visa and Mastercard because consumers carry them. Consumers carry them because merchants accept them. Breaking that loop requires either regulatory force or a critical mass of users large enough to make merchants care — which is precisely what the EuroPA deal attempts to deliver by connecting existing national user bases rather than building from scratch.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#396

Post by Cyph0n »

Archelaos wrote: post #371
joe_mamba wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No one should be required to carry an attacker-controlled tracking device What about being required to carry a your-own-government-controlled tracking device? Because the US or Chine government can't harm me in Europe via the data they collect from me, But the EU authorities can if they want to, so naturally I fear them more if they were the ones hoovering my data. What are the odds they're using this on-shore tech…

The odds are very low. It all depents on the people. So far, the European citizens are very privacy senstive. The European institutions are characterized by a huge devision of power. There is no chance that European instutitions can impose their will against a considerable majority of people. If people turn away from liberal democracy, that's another matter. But then everything is lost anyway.

> So far, the European citizens are very privacy senstive.

In some areas, sure - like GDPR.

In other areas, absolutely not - like chat control.

As another commenter pointed out, it seems as if government mandated privacy intrusion is OK, while violations by corporations are quickly shutdown. It’s like the opposite of how it works here in the US.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#397

Post by abcdefg12 »

fhdkweig wrote: post #233
severino wrote: post #135

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…

> Whatever they come up with, I hope it doesn't tie you to a Google or Apple smartphone. 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…

Never mind russians putting starlinks on flying bombs to blow up Ukrainians. But those poor Russian Internet users you invented. While it’s jailable offense in russia to own starlink.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#398

Post by nosianu »

pimterry wrote: post #254
severino wrote: post #135

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…

> 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 I don't know about Huawei, but actually most (all?) of the banking apps in Spain should work on a non-Google-certified Android builds. There's an community list tracking GrapheneOS compatibility at https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa…

GrapheneOS in Spain?

https://www.androidauthority.com/why-i-use-grapheneos-on-pix...

> Police in Spain have reportedly started profiling people based on their phones; specifically, and surprisingly, those carrying Google Pixel devices. Law enforcement officials in Catalonia say they associate Pixels with crime because drug traffickers are increasingly turning to these phones. But it’s not Google’s secure Titan M2 chip that has criminals favoring the Pixel — instead, it’s GrapheneOS, a privacy-focused alternative to the default Pixel OS.

EDIT: Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44473694

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#399

Post by joe_mamba »

Cyph0n wrote: post #396
Archelaos wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The odds are very low. It all depents on the people. So far, the European citizens are very privacy senstive. The European institutions are characterized by a huge devision of power. There is no chance that European instutitions can impose their will against a considerable majority of people. If people turn away from liberal democracy, that's another matter. But then everything is lost anyway.

> So far, the European citizens are very privacy senstive. In some areas, sure - like GDPR. In other areas, absolutely not - like chat control. As another commenter pointed out, it seems as if government mandated privacy intrusion is OK, while violations by corporations are quickly shutdown. It’s like the opposite of how it works here in the US.

>it seems as if government mandated privacy intrusion is OK

Once you give people an outside boogieman(Putin, Trump, Covids, etc) or a self inflicted false flag crisis(surge in violent crime rates for example) to shake them up to their core and put the fear in them, you can then easily sell your intrusion of privacy in their lives and extension of the police state, as the necessary solution that protects them.

When you start lose control of your people because their standard of living has been going downhill for 2 decades and they realize the future prospects aren't any better so they hate you even more, you can regain control of them by rallying them up on your side in a us-versus-them type of game against external or internal aggressors that you paint as "the enemy". The media is your friend here. /s

This isn't an EU or US exclusive issue, it's everywhere with a government issue. The difference as to why the EU people seem to be more OK with government intrusion compared to the US, is that EU always has external aggressors the government can point to as justification for invasiveness and control, while the US has been and still is the unchallenged global superpower so it has no real external threats ATM, meaning division must be manufactured internally (left vs right, red vs blue, woke vs maga, skin color vs skin color, gender vs gender, etc) so that the ruling class can assert control in peace.

Either way, we all seem to be heading towards the same destination.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#400

Post by HunOL »

Ninn wrote: post #186
Coeur wrote: post #165

Not sure Wero will succeed, but European country-specific mobile payment systems like Swish (Sweden), Vipps (rest of Scandinavia), Bizum (Spain), iDeal (Netherlands), Bluecode (Germany and Austria), Twint (Switzerland), BLIK (Poland) etc. are also working on interconnectivity under the EMPSA association. Combined they already have 110+ million users. Wero is like a monolith, while EMPSA is more like mobile phone roam…

Like sepa, this initiative can be forced by law and made open rather than tanken hostage by large cooperates, which may then exclude parts of the market.

Very European approach: the winner is chosen by law. Is Wero really a success? According to this article, in 2024 it processed over €7.5 billion.

Polish BLIK, which is not even mentioned in the article and which has joined the EuroPA Alliance, processed €83 billion in 2024, with a 30% y/y increase in H1 2025. I understand that BLIK is much older, but it invested significant effort and money in marketing and promotions while delivering a good user experience. BLIK is now trying to expand to Romania and Slovakia, yet Wero is getting all the hype on Hacker News. Maybe this is a case of East, South, and West Europe being treated differently. Is the only “European” solution one that comes from Western Europe?

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