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Bye bye Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, and many others. They can go and play “America First”. We’ll have our own independent system by november 2025.
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A belated clarification:
It does not appear that there are plans for a European Credit Card.
However, …
- There is the semi-private online payment system called WERO, meant as a competitor to Paypal
- There are plans for a Digital Euro (D€) system by the ECB
This is referring to the plans to create digital euro with GNU Taler, right?
GNU Taler (Taxable Anonymous Libre Electronic Resources) is a new secure electronic payment system based on open standards, free software, and advanced cryptography. GNU Taler provides privacy guarantees to the buyer while offering the possibility to audit merchants, making sale incomes transparent and fraud difficult. To online merchants and retailers, GNU Taler offers instant transaction clearance without risks of fake payment methods. Computations needed to clear the payments are efficient and scalable so that banks can pass on lower transaction costs to consumers and merchants. Consumers can withdraw money from their existing bank account into their GNU Taler wallet, detaching their spending habits from scrutiny, in the way cash does.
The NGI TALER project is funded under Horizon Europe (Pilots for the Next Generation Internet) with the aim of bringing GNU Taler to market across Europe.
Please please please
Went have o never heard of this. Sounds promising!
By november 2025 they will begin negotiations to write a draft of the proposal.
With the speed of our bureaucracy and the current evolution of the world, we’ll be paying with sparkly rocks and seashells before we’re getting a digital Euro.
Without digital euro, there is already Wero app to replace PayPal, Visa and MasterCard. At least in theory… It’s a payment app that allows to pay and receive money via wire transfer from bank to bank without fee.
In practice, many banks are not enrolled in this program and I have yet to find a single business where I can pay this way. But at least replacing PayPal to send money to friends and family should be easy enough.
There are many private alternatives, but that is missing the point. An ECB backed digital coin takes away the private bank monopoly on printing digital money. It will be a great contribution to the commons and will decrease the power of private banks. It will also contribute to increased economic resilience.
I recommend reading the publications from positive money on this subject.
https://positivemoney.org/eu/publications/a-digital-euro-for-the-people/
If I want to use my main bank account with wero I have to link my mobile number to it and can’t use it for wero with my other account anymore, because that’s the only way my bank supports it. Only a small number of banks actually let you use the wero app with multiple sources. Makes it completely useless for me. Paypal isn’t the only one that can do that either. Basically everything not made by companies that primarily want to be banks can do this. E.g. Klarna.
The other thing is that I need something that works outside the EU. That’s where replacing paypal and credit cards is actually difficult. In my own country or in the EU, I have plenty of options.
Here in Italy we have Satispay. It is already quite big. I guess there are still some limitations but these are quickly fixed. Direct bank transfers and reduced fees Satispay
I haven’t come across this one. Important difference: Wero is a EU government program, Satispay is operated by a private company.
A private company that is already enshittifying, to be precise. After years of gathering market share by being a zero commissions solution, lately they introduced commissions in some cases higher than what more consolidated payment solutions have.
This is what makes me hopeful with Wero being a government initiative, but it needs a serious push before it starts to become useful.
Do we have any documentation about the origin of the infrastructure providers for Wero?
As far as I understand, it’s nothing more than bank-to-bank transfer, just made easy with links and QR codes instead of typing IBAN in your online banking.
Wero is an account-to-account (A2A) solution, meaning that transfers will go through almost immediately once approved. It follows the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer protocol established by the European Payments Council in 2017.
Sure. Wero is interesting because it is an official program but I am worried that it may not be so widespread. Here in Italy I never heard of it. Never seen anyone using it. Maybe it is new?
It is very new, yes
Its not really new. Wero is a rebrand of the Dutch iDeal which has been in widespread use for over a decadeEdit: After trying to find a source for that claim, Im not so sure its correct. The EPI did buy iDeal several years ago, but the text I’m finding doesn’t say Wero is a rebrand of iDeal outright.
iDeal will be replaced by Wero (either the technology or the branding?) in the NL by 2027
I think that’s wrong. Wikipedia says it’s a new system. And yes, it started last year, so it is still rather new
Yeah… It’s a bit opaque, I’m not so sure anymore either.
https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDEAL
The Dutch Wikipedia page says that iDeal was bought by EPI in 2023. They then launched Wero in 2024, and eventually iDeal will be renamed to Wero (Note it says renamed and not replaced)
Maybe they rebranded it? Maybe they reused the technology? I’m not quite sure if and what the relation is.
Edit: This blog post from 2023 claims that EPI said iDeal will be used as the foundation for their (then future) payment platform Wero
https://bankblog.nl/2023/het-nederlandse-ideal-is-verkocht-en-wordt-straks-wero/
I learned about it recently myself on Lemmy. Many French banks are enrolled, but only 1 German bank. I hope it can develop, but today it’s practically useless. It needs a serious push from national governments if they want it to succeed.
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There’s something similar in Spain called Bizum, created by banking institutions. Most Spanish banks implement it so your phone number is associated to your back account, so you can send and receive money instantly without fees to anyone just by knowing their phone number. Works really well.
Belgium had Payconiq, it’s being replaced with Wero.
The program has expanded to Italy and Portugal too. The UE will end up mandating Europe wide interoperability among the biggest ones, is my guess
What about Klarna? Isn’t it Swedish?
It is. However, they are… Well, let’s describe them as pretty US like in spirit.
Shitty. That’s the word you’re looking for
What does this mean? In regard of their (who is “them”?) political affiliations? Simply the fact that they are not US based or owned lets me prefer them over PayPal.
Shitty business behaviour. People got surprised by changes in the ‘fine print’ of mail order and internet shops. Consumers had trouble with the concept that they now in essence had two contracts. One with the shop and one with Klarna. Even if the shop didn’t deliver the goods or delivered wrong or broken goods, Klarna still demanded the purchase prize.
Klarna has a lot of automated processes. A lot of problems derived from that. People were supposed to enter a certain case number when paying - and nothing else. If people messed up by adding other info (like an invoice number/date/seller) or mistyped, Klarna’s system wasn’t able to handle it. If they couldn’t file the payment there was no other system in place to assure a correct booking. Instead consumers received payment reminders and extra reminder fees. Even when consumers showed proof of payment the system often didn’t accept it and it went on and on, in a few cases Klarna went to court about it.
The latest is Klarna’s idea wanting banking info from consumers - and by all it’s literally everything that is mentioned in your banking statements. Klarna wants the consumer to sign a declaration of release to the bank so that Klarna can access everything.
I haven’t tried it. Core difference (on paper): Wero is a EU government program, unlike Klarna which is operated by a private company.
Isn’t Wero run by a group of EU banks? First time I hear about EU involvement. Afaik it is the counter effort to the digital Euro from these banks.
Edit: I see, the EU Commission is somewhat involved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Initiative but I don’t think they are the driving force behind Wero.
You are right, I may have confused things a bit. EPI is the EU program and Wero is one project developed by a goup of banks taking advantage of the EPI.
Also the digital euro isn’t supposed to take the place of the ‘regular’ euro at once, so banks will still want to have other technologies after the digital euro is introduced.
They are evil.
As far as I understand, Wero won’t replace Mastercard or Visa. It’s just a way to transfer money between people, like Swish or Vipps for example.
If businesses start of offer it as a payment option, then it could be an alternative to card payment. But we are clearly not there yet. I already use my phone as a mastercard most of the time.
only for German and French banks though, glad we have BLIK here in Poland
Mostly French banks at this point, I only know of PostBank that offers Wero at the moment. I know for sure DeutcheBank doesn’t have it yet.
Well collegues, I think we must see it as a positive evolution. We can have some doubts for sure, but there are things moving onto a more independent Europe and we cannot be against that idea. So let’s stay positive and we’ll see what direction things are going. Keep buying European !!!
This is really really good news.
The digital euro won’t come before 2028, and even this is not sure as the legislation is not yet approved. Or did I miss something?
(That aside, there are many issues with digital fiat money to be solved yet, including privacy, financial censorship, and other things.)
[Edit typo.]
Weren’t those problems solved in the 1990s with Ecash? If they have a trusted central authority doing time stamps, then they can just use blinded signatures.
Can Canada get in on this?
Huh… Push Britain to get back to the EU and then you guys (and Australia, and New Zealand) could join on the basis of being in the Commonwealth!
As an Australian, I fully support this!
Meanwhile my Bank is switching from Maestro (USA) to VISA (USA) for my everyday debit Card, and i must accept the change until September. I guess i have to find a new Bank after so many years.
Why does it matter to you?
Because i don’t want to use Visa for my daily expenses. They get a cut from shops.
Maestro doesn’t take a cut?
Yes, but i want to find something with Girocard. Them changing to Visa means that there are no plans for European EC cards.
C24 bank gives a Mastercard by default, but you can get a free, separate Girocard as well.
AFAIK many cards are hybrid Girocard/(Visa|MasterCard) debit cards. They use the Girocard payment system if supported by the store and (Visa|Mastercard) otherwise.
Unfortunately if you want to minimize the amount of money leaving your country you have to pay in cash because the technology behind all other ways of paying are largely supplied by us banks (for now)
I know, i try, but is not always working.
I also want to use less companies but then end up not having cash on my and paying with my phone soo
My attention will be on the selection of providers, planned for Q2 2025. If non-EU (and I would personally exclude also non-Eurozone, because incentives) providers are allowed in the infrastructure, especially American, Israeli or Chinese, the whole thing is not only a joke, but an extremely risky operation.
Digital euro uh, only matters to the government and banks. Lower cost of production I’m sure. No need to store physical cash for banks.
For citizens, it’s not like we haven’t been using bank cards and apps this whole time. We just have been linking our payments to a bank account we hold digitally on our phones.
So, this isn’t a big change for citizens. Just a lower cost for production.
Not having our cash transaction routed through US services is extremely significant in terms of privacy and autonomy.
Autonomy is indeed more valuable than profits
It’s not just cost of production.
I like the idea of having digital cash like physical cash, with cheap transaction fees if at all, no transactions over international private corps instead of my bank, multiple cards which may or may not work in one place or another, and different apps in different countries.
Transaction fees are already lower than cash handling.
i believe they want the front end experience to be as much like what we have now, but the inner workings are very different and lower cost is not the goal.
OK, I get it. Maybe we can take a backpack and go living in a cave somewhere. Offgrid, away from everything and we reject any kind of civilization, service and trust, because yes… even your best friend can become your worst enemy. Then why take the risk of having friends? I use the proverb: “Care is the mother of the porcelain store.” But I refuse to question every detail in my life. Have a little faith.
Crazy
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