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

lesnumeriques.com

621–630 of 811 posts

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

#621
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…

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…

US should have sane transfers soon. The Federal Reserve developed FedNow which is instant bank transfers. It is more secure than ACH since it only does pushes and requests.

It takes time for banks to implement it. There is also conflict with Zelle that some banks developed. I don't think it is meant for buying things, but secure and fast replacement for ACH would be good enough.

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

#622
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trading a dependency on MasterCard and Visa for one on Google and Apple is at best a sidegrade. More likely you end up worse off.

> Trading a dependency on MasterCard and Visa for one on Google and Apple is at best a sidegrade. That's really not how it works. You as the user are prompted to pick the bank you want to use, and then your bank prompts you to approve the transaction. The only scenario I can think of that might involve google or apple is if you want to use Android or iPhone for mobile payments with NFC.

Which part of "confirm the transaction by opening the banking app on your mobile phone." does not depend on a banking app installed on a Google/Apple-controlled environment?

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

#623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it comes down to who you would trust more - your own government which you have some control over via elections or some (potentially multinational) corporation which you have exactly zero control over?

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.

Theres a natural tension here, because in order for this to be true you need a diverse market with many competitors. But that is bad usually, because it's extremely inefficient, so it gets optimized out. The monopolies we see are indeed an optimization - the natural climax of a developing market.

Consider payments: you do not want to carry around 100 different cards and trinkets just to pay for things in your daily life, right? And for merchants, they do not want to make deals with 100 different companies to accept payments, right? So what's the end result?

We see the monopolies in the US economy because our economy is very efficient. It could be even more efficient - consider, for example, how much time and money could be saved if only one phone OS existed.

But then of course that's bad for you, the consumer, because then these huge corporations rule your life and can essentially do whatever they want.

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

#625
(throwaway alt because main is traceable)

epi acquired idealo (in the Netherlands, and payconiq in Belgium/Luxembourg), slapped the wero brand on it, and announced proudly they have x million customers.

wero as a brand has close to 0 market recognition, and with idealo and payconiq they butchered some of the systems (in the name of consolidation) so badly that incidents have become the norm (and security wise ...yikes!).

Worth mentioning that epi is just the latest attempt at a pan-European payment system, the previous attempts, the Monnet project and PEPSI, failed miserably after wasting billions (tens of billions?) and ...it doesn't repeat, it rhymes.

I wish we could replace visa/mastercard but epi is absolutely not the solution, imho.

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

#626
post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Euro is pronounced "you-ro" This in not true for everywhere that uses the Euro, unsurprisingly because that encompasses a large linguistic area. I know for a fact France doesn't pronounce it that way.

How does France pronounce it?

wéro (é like elephant)

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

#627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The central bank controls what payments are permitted by what laws exist, not some risk management system that has decided that your legal purchase is too risky or some foreign state has applied sanctions against you. That sounds worse to be honest. You're essentially asking for the government to be not only aware of but also able to control all digital payments. That upends how money has worked over (literally) mi…

Worse? Are you serious? In EU, Czechia. Foreign(french lol) banks are banning accounts because you work in gun manufacturing industry. In EU. When 2 countries from you, there is a FCKIN' war happening. Only because France, Germany, UK and similar countries are against guns and against self-defense, where your only option is to lay on the ground and let the attacker kill you. Luckily we can still use guns for self-def…

> In EU, Czechia. Foreign(french lol) banks are banning accounts because you work in gun manufacturing industry.

I don't think that's how its supposed to work. So IF you're correct and a French entity of any kind is found breaking current Czech laws, THEN this must be reported and action must be taken against it, no matter the law, no discussions here.

> Only because France, Germany, UK and similar countries are against guns and against self-defense, where your only option is to lay on the ground and let the attacker kill you.

This is a big reduction to the absurd, and unnecessarily inflammatory. I'm no dang, but I would ask you to please refrain from such things, in the name of civil discourse. It could have been dishonestly framed in a number of other ways, for example, "Poland as a country is pro-violence and pro-crime, since they are arguably fond of shooting people". I know this must not be as simple, as "laying on the ground and letting the attacker kill you" does not look like a sound defense strategy. However, gun collecting and sports are not, to me, good reasons for owning firearms. To each their own.

> Luckily we can still use guns for self-defense, we can conceal carry by default and we will fight EU laws till our death for this.

> (pepper sprays, knives and even katana, whatever)

Wow, go Brussels I guess. Hope they can eventually implement the "idiotic laws" that make people unable to kill each other with katanas.

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

#629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In EU, Czechia. Foreign(french lol) banks are banning accounts because you work in gun manufacturing industry. In EU. When 2 countries from you, there is a FCKIN' war happening. That shouldn't be happening. French banks on Czech soil should operate under Czech, not French laws. Otherwise the Czech banking authorities should go after them. Something is fishy about that. Also, which banks do French citizens working in…

Yes this is very bizarre. But this is official story, contractors and employees who worked for Czech arms manufacturer got their personal! accounts disabled. They had mortgages in these accounts and bank notify them to move mortgage elsewhere. Reason given by bank, broken internal policy, we cannot disclose which. Goodbye. https://militarnyi.com/en/news/czech-banks-discriminate-agai...

> Reason given by bank, broken internal policy, we cannot disclose which. Goodbye.

Wow this sucks. One thing I took from this comment (and the previous one), if you allow me to (badly) synthesize is: we might need less policy making and more policy enforcement.

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

#630

Yeah, thanks no thanks. Wero is owned by the banks from worst EU countries - Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands. In my country, we call them New Middle East. Yeah, no way I would support this in my business. They will ban you for things they don't "like" in their countries. Like free speech, gun manufacturing and exporting to Ukraine. Being anti illegal immigrants etc. (legal immigrants are great, like Ukranians,…

> Like free speech, gun manufacturing and exporting to Ukraine.

"Free-speech' discussions aside, they're banning you from "manufacturing" and "exporting" TO Ukraine? This war is becoming very complicated.

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