Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

lesnumeriques.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

751–760 of 811 posts

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

#751

Post by PowerElectronix »

amelius wrote: post #406
PowerElectronix wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It deems to me that the rule of law is easier to apply to third parties than to the government that is in charge of administering it

Not if your government properly implements separation of powers, as is the case in most Western countries. Yes, I'm aware someone is trying to undermine it in the U.S. currently. That doesn't mean that companies are a safe haven suddenly.

Separation of powers is easy to erode and we are seeing that happening in a lot of western countries. Companies are, of course, never going to be trustworthy, but they at least can go out of business if they go full dystopian.

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

#752

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

mcv wrote: post #415
mytailorisrich wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the point is: Why would you bother with QR codes if you have contactless?

I still don't think contactless works across the internet.

I think this is the point, they have different use-cases.

Contactless requires the acceptor to have a specific piece of hardware that comes with a contract.

The QR code is an image, that AFIAK contains instructions on a specific transfer (target account number, amount, reference etc) in a machine-readable format, that the sender can chose to scan and accept or not.

Neither is "better", they have different uses.

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

#753

Post by l23k4 »

joe_mamba wrote: post #723
l23k4 wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has nothing to do with why this is happening.

What's your argument on this? Because nothing that I said is wrong.

The "because" part is wrong. Also, FWIW, countries in the EU don't just get to make their own banking rules.

I don't have an argument, you are simply misunderstanding what's happening here.

Closing accounts that belong to high risk customers who aren't making you a bunch of money is an entirely normal and legal thing to do.

EU solved this a long time ago, you have the right to a "basic payment account". Just not necessarily from the bank of your choice. The accounts closed here were not such accounts.

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

#754

Post by amelius »

PowerElectronix wrote: post #751
amelius wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if your government properly implements separation of powers, as is the case in most Western countries. Yes, I'm aware someone is trying to undermine it in the U.S. currently. That doesn't mean that companies are a safe haven suddenly.

Separation of powers is easy to erode and we are seeing that happening in a lot of western countries. Companies are, of course, never going to be trustworthy, but they at least can go out of business if they go full dystopian.

So how many user accounts should Apple or Google wrongfully close until they go out of business? 1000? 10,000? ...

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

#755

Post by l23k4 »

dormento wrote: post #629
Fokamul wrote: post #602

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...

> 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.

Why? It's because of enforcement the bank is doing this.

The policies don't prohibit banks from getting rid of risky customers, they actively encourage it.

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

#756

Post by l23k4 »

econ wrote: post #659
joe_mamba wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Reason given by bank, broken internal policy, we cannot disclose which. Ridiculous. I'm sure what they did was illegal, the problem with such cases is that even if you take them to court and win, you'll still lose a lot of time, money and stress in the process of fighting a bank in court, while for the bank the lawsuit is just another small business expense. Centrain industries and businesses tend to act above the l…

Like big tech they may refuse service when they like to (which is crazy)

Why is it crazy? EU has the "basic payment account" scheme which makes sure that ultimately nobody is left without a bank account.

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

#757

Post by l23k4 »

Fokamul wrote: post #587
dataflow wrote: post #509

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. In EU. When 2 countries from you, there is a FCKIN' war happening.

Why do you think this is special? US banks will do this too lmao.

There's not a single serious bank in the world that wouldn't consider this an incredibly high risk industry. The compliance load for banks is incredible, especially if you're selling those weapons internationally.

>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.

All EU countries and the UK use pretty much the same wording when it comes to self defense. ECHR limits what the states can allow, Czechia isn't allowed to e.g. pass a law allowing you to shoot anyone who enters your home.

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

#758

Post by pluies »

beAbU wrote: post #507
wasabi991011 wrote: post #301

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?

I've racked my brain trying to write it in a good enough approximation, but honestly the "eu" sound doesn't have a match in most English accents, and neither does the "r", so it wouldn't make much sense trying to write it down in English. Youtube will give you hundreds of videos pronouncing it correctly if you want to check!

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

#759

Post by mytailorisrich »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #752
mcv wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't think contactless works across the internet.

I think this is the point, they have different use-cases. Contactless requires the acceptor to have a specific piece of hardware that comes with a contract. The QR code is an image, that AFIAK contains instructions on a specific transfer (target account number, amount, reference etc) in a machine-readable format, that the sender can chose to scan and accept or not. Neither is "better", they have different uses.

You don't need a QR code "across the internet". A QR code is for in-person payments. That may be convenient for private individual to private individual (which is a niche market) but for stores or things like transport contactless, which we already all have, is clearly superior UX and there is neither a demand nor a point in having QR codes instead.

My take-away from this tedious thread is that Wero does not currently support contactless. It is fine to admit it (I don't why people turn into fanboys over randopm things) but that does make it of limited use for in-person transactions apart from niche use-cases and, certainly, this means NOT "Goodbye to Visa and Mastercard" just yet.

Post reply on HN