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

lesnumeriques.com

701–710 of 811 posts

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

#701
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes it a bad design, since every person you interact with has the potential to be a scumbag and not deliver on what you paid for. "Get a lawyer and sue them" or "Rely on your local consumer advocacy agency" cannot be the answers at the kind of scale that will be enabled. This is the reason I only _ever_ spend money on credit cards, and never use cash or debit cards (European in the US). I've personally had at…

At least up til now, this doesn't seem to be a significant problem with iDeal. Any iDeal receiver will need to have at least a Dutch bank account, which requires the bank to be very sure of the identity of the person/people (UBOs) holding the account. So downright fraud is unlikely. If there is, one can file a police report, and hopefully the DA will take it to court. Disputes between non-fraudulent entities happen o…

> Any iDeal receiver will need to have at least a Dutch bank account,

Which makes it somewhat less than iDeal for anyone who isn't Dutch. The magic of Visa and Mastercard is they enable commerce between two people, even if they bank on different sides of the planet. Well, not Russia - but they do work in Japan, and if you ever dealt with the Japanese banking system you will know that's a minor miracle.

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

#702
post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Why is this supposed to be surprising? These kinds of customers are a huge compliance burden for the bank, why should the banks keep doing business with customers that most likely cost them money?

Because the Czech branch of the French bank operates under Czech not French laws. French rules don't have jurisdiction in Czechia.

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

#703

I'd like to take this opportunity to share with you all that Wero is called Wero because Euro is pronounced "you-ro" and when you share your you-ro it becomes a we-ro.

Having associations with Aotearoa/NZ, I read it as w-eh-roh, which is part of the traditional Maori greeting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(M%C4%81ori)

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

#704

(In French.) That could be a massive hassle for American tourists, who will still mostly have Visa and Mastercard. I'm sure that there will be some kind of solution -- I suspect Google Pay and Apple Pay will support the new network. But I'll have to keep an eye out. I might even have to start bringing cash. I used to make that the very first thing I did on landing. The last few times I didn't get any cash at all.

Businesses who cater to customers will still accept Visa and Mastercard. Probably along with the new payment systems.

But businesses which have their income from government grants or other non-customer sources can do what they want.

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

#705
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…

Interestingly in a number of African Countries (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania etc) , we have “Mobile Money”, Payments are instant, via USSD, no internet required, I can even pay online using USSD push.This is a classical example of humans using what they have to build what they need , no fancy internet enabled smart phones required. I can send money anytime instantly to my grandma deep in the village. She can withdraw from…

For those wondering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstructured_Supplementary_Ser...

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

#706

(In French.) That could be a massive hassle for American tourists, who will still mostly have Visa and Mastercard. I'm sure that there will be some kind of solution -- I suspect Google Pay and Apple Pay will support the new network. But I'll have to keep an eye out. I might even have to start bringing cash. I used to make that the very first thing I did on landing. The last few times I didn't get any cash at all.

This is already an issue for tourists in many countries that have their own payment system (e.g. Brazil, India, Singapore, Thailand). In some of them you have companies that came up with products for tourists that allow them to pay but they usually come with fees. From what I know the majority of tourists in these countries just travel with cash.

Cards are accepted everywhere in Brazil, including all foreign cards. For Thailand it used to be the same, and I doubt they have regressed.

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

#707
post #433

Wero is for internet payments, but Visa and Mastercard are still involved for card payments. I just got a new-style Dutch debit card and it has a Mastercard logo on it; Visa cards are also still being given out.

The idea is that merchants will ditch the card-pos in the long run. You scan a QR-code or send money through some app. Satispay does that in Italy and got massive rollout from stores because fees were pretty low also for smaller transfers, so no more "sorry, at least 5 euros to pay with card"

Too bad you will be forced to use a phone then. I don't like having yet another single point of failure. But maybe by that time, the EU requirement to accept cash will have taken force.

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

#708
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…

iDeal is superb and the most convenient payment method I've dealt with.

Wero claims that they won't support paying through a browser, and that it will be tied to either Google or Apple, which seems like a huge step back from iDeal in its currents state.

I wrote about this a few months back (including actual sources for their claims): https://whynothugo.nl/journal/2026/02/25/entrenching-america...

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

#709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When using a government website, you were intimidated by the security posture of... Plaid? (Genuine question, maybe this was some other provider but Plaid's aggregator tool is the most common place I see this pop up in real life for ACH)

I personally have _no idea_ what the security posture of plaid is. I know they're a startup and made a bit of noise a few years ago, but if I was trying to buy something and a third party app popped up saying, "hey give me total access to withdraw directly from your bank account for a sec", why on earth would I say yes to that? It also seems to go against common security advice. "Never log into your back account if r…

In fairness they redirect you to your bank to login, you authorize the application (which can be revoked at any time), and then they redirect you back with tokenized information. (In fact it's kind of a pain point that when I use Plaid to link my bank for eg reimbursement deposits from my FSA/HSA, it has tokenized the account numbers so I can't actually tell which account is which.) I guess I get for less savvy users why that might look scary but the alternative is... keying your account number directly into a merchant's system for ACH, which is actually scary (and the default on many government websites which I actually trust less!)

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

#710
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…

The redirect to a bank is worrying, isn’t it trivial to fake redirecting to a fake bank ?

When I'm redirected to my bank, my bank shows my account name and some details (including a custom per-device avatar). Spoofing that would require gathering these small details.

Some banks have a custom device to scan a QR code, where the device generates a signing token but also shows the transaction details too. Regrettably, these are not too common, despite being the safest variant.

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