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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

#691

Post by microtonal »

kalleboo wrote: post #586
hearsathought wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never invited the extra surveillance middleman What's an extra layer of surveillance? Why accept the "credit and debit" surveillance middlemen but not the google/apple middlenmen? What the world needs are "cash cards". Something equivalent to cash not tied to your identity that you can use in the real and virtual world. I simply do not understand why governments or the private sector do not provide such options.

We used to have a "cash card" in Sweden in the 90's[0]. It flopped because nobody wants to keep manually re-filling it with value all the time. It's much more convenient to have a card that pulls from your bank account (either instantly via debit or monthly via credit). In the mass market, convenience always trumps privacy. The places where a "cash card" have gained popularity have all been using the "backdoor" of pu…

Ah, yes, we had those in The Netherlands as well (Chipknip), everybody hated those cards (though if I remember correctly most debit cards also doubled as a Chipknip card), but many parking meters used them for some time.

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

#692

Post by hactually »

supermatt wrote: post #680
Cyph0n wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> like chat control. That has never been passed in any form. > the opposite of how it works here in the US. It appears that you have conveniently forgotten about FISA, EARN IT, CLOUD act, PATRIOT act, LAED, etc, etc.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/after-years-controvers...

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

#693

Post by gpvos »

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.

Very privacy sensitive? In Germany, maybe. Elsewhere in Europe, not so much. See the regular attempts to push through something like chat control.

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

#694

Post by nicwilson »

fhdkweig wrote: post #528
varjag wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink was never available in Russia due to the sanctions regime. It's only use by Russians was via grey import terminals on the frontline in Ukraine (made possible due to complications of geofencing).

I guess I was misunderstanding. I thought that Starlink was deliberately ignoring the sanctions because they were able to shut it off real quick once Musk got that tweet https://x.com/sikorskiradek/status/2016221397396168995

You might be thinking of Ubiquiti, who were exposed as blind eyeing the sanctions

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

#695

Post by gpvos »

joe_mamba wrote: post #379
digiown wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all the same. How is suing Google any different, if you instead get debanked by Google for violating their "terms"? The only solution is untraceable, permissionless money, like Monero. Why do you think governments try so hard to ban it?

> if you instead get debanked by Google for violating their "terms" Since when is google a bank? >The only solution is untraceable, permissionless money, like Monero. Why do you think governments try so hard to ban it? Because untraceable currency is mostly used by criminals for crime.

My bank's app uses Google Pay to pay at POS terminals, so Google can at least block that.

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

#696

Post by rudolftheone »

scotty79 wrote: post #407
unmole wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India built RuPay, China built UnionPay. There's no reason why Europe can't do the same.

European countries each have their system. But they do not interoperate. You can't pay with blik in Germany, you can't pay with German debit card in Poland.

As jacekm mentioned already (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46963497), Blik has just made a significant step toward interoperability just week ago, see https://www.blik.com/przelewy-na-telefon-w-euro-z-hiszpanii-...

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

#697

Post by thijsr »

ranguna wrote: post #578

Why would anyone use wero when the digital euro gets released? The article briefly touches this point but dismisses it saying wero and the digital euro complement each other, but doesn't go into detail on how. I see no point in a privately run digital currency when we can have a public one. I guess whichever has good privacy, reliability, ease of use and speed will win.

A digital euro is intended to the the digital equivalent of cash. It is issued directly by the central bank. Currently, consumers cannot have an account at the central bank. They have a balance at a commercial bank, and the commercial bank has an account at the central bank. Right now, you must have a private middleman to do any banking. The digital euro should offer a public alternative to that.

(but it probably won't ever happen, because banks are lobbying against it with FUD campaigns, they feel like it threatens their existence)

Wero is something completely different. It allows consumers to easily pay merchants, mostly online. The digital euro is not a payment network in the same sense as Visa, Mastercard, iDEAL and others.

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

#698

Post by chii »

kergonath wrote: post #660
the_fall wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

35 years ago, a good chunk of the current EU was under a Soviet-imposed totalitarian rule. Spain was a dictatorship until 1975. And it's been just 80 years since WWII. It always boggles my mind that most Europeans are absolutely convinced that nothing like that could ever happen again. Meanwhile, many people in the US are convinced that the government will be coming for them any minute now.

> It always boggles my mind that most Europeans are absolutely convinced that nothing like that could ever happen again. It’s not that it cannot happen again. It’s that the EU is explicitly built against that and if it happens it will come from the national governments (see Hungary), not the EU.

> it will come from the national governments (see Hungary), not the EU.

what's the difference? The EU relies on national gov't to enforce rules. Until the EU becomes a sovereign entity with standalone enforcement mechanisms, it's no more able to ensure things can't happen than the UN.

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

#699

Post by jiveturkey »

krunck wrote: post #32
hnfong wrote: post #20

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.

This. And don't forget that most businesses have in their payment processing contract terms (set forth by Visa/MC ) that prevent the business from directly charging card users the card processing fees. Which means that everybody - even cash users - pay for those fees. What a racket.

There are lots of restaurants in the US these days that charge 3% for use of any credit card. One that I've been even has a sign posted at the entrance about it, that it's legal to do so. Must have gotten a lot of complaints that it was somehow illegal, or perhaps against card processing rules. Because it's one thing to post a sign that says you charge the fee, it's another for that sign to mention the legality of it.

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

#700

Post by mechazawa »

wiseowise wrote: post #249
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…

Wero is iDeal.

I wish it was still just iDeal. The rebranding was done very poorly and the things that they added like accounts are just bad ideas
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