It would be nice if the banks stopped to trying to kill the local payment providers for a start.
In Denmark we’ve had Dankort since 1983, which is free for the consumers to have and use, and it’s very cheap volume based pricing for merchants.
However in the past 10 years or so, the banks have been pushing businesses and customers to use VISA/Mastercard. These are not free. The consumers pay an annual fee, and the merchants pay very high transaction fees. Yet the payment providers and banks sell the lie that they are somehow cheaper, even if they’re not. A lot of small businesses trust their banks or the payment providers to give them a good deal.
By now, it’s basically necessary for consumers to have some kind of foreign card, because so many businesses have stopped accepting Dankort. Most banks don’t even offer a “clean” Dankort anymore. They only have dual cards, where the Dankort and VISA are on the same card, which removes the choice from the consumer, since the businesses will charge the VISA. Many businesses don’t even understand what cards they accept. I always ask if they accept Dankort if the sign isn’t visible, and they think they do, but they don’t.
The story is almost the same for the instant payment systems. The banks are the ones who fucked it up, while fighting for and clinging to control of the domestic market, by confusing the customers and businesses and pushing their own limited product.
It’s long overdue for the EU to decide on a union wide solution. They’re already on it, but it’s way too slow or hindered by the political desire for this to be a private market. It really shouldn’t be.
It’s the same story all over Europe. Portugal still has Multibanco, but as far as I know no one issues a exclusively Multibanco card anymore. My first bank cards were all just Multibanco.
MBway (out digital payments) works great, but I guess in 90% of cases it’s associated to a Visa card…
No strategic vision and always that difficulty to cross borders and make alliances with neighbors.
I’m really hopefully that Wero and the Europa alliance will change that.
I have high hopes for the Digital Euro.
To have a digital payment medium that is issued by the central bank and can be exchanged without fees as a 1:1 digital equipment of cash would be amazing and go beyond just replacing American credit card providers.
If they do it like the Brazilian Pix, there’s a good chance it’ll be a success.
That’s something different, that’s what Wero is trying to achieve in Europe. But the Digital Euro goes well beyond what Pix does.
I’m not familiar with it, is it a private venture? If so it sounds like a different thing
Wero is private, it belongs to the EPI company. But they also have an agreement with the alliance of other payment solutions to make it all interoperable by 2027.
What’s the main difference? From the link it seems to be a cryptocurrency with the same payment features.
What are the chances it will rely on Google’s Play integrity service?
I’m betting that anyone wirh unlocked bootloader or root access won’t be able to run this.
The EUDI Wallets have/had that as a requirement in their spec but it has been heavily criticized, no idea if it will persist though
I just find it crazy that they cannot make this happen before 2029…
This is the most recent update report on the ECB’s ongoing work to establish a rulebook: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/timeline/profuse/shared/pdf/ecb.derdgp251030_RDG_progress_report_October_25.en.pdf?d978acf24c059027f1372a4f42155ac9
Turns out it’s a pretty massive undertaking that could tank the economy if you get it wrong, so I can see how it might take a few more years
On the one hand, can’t wait for it, on the other, hope they don’t rush it and rather get it right
It would be awesome if my euros weren’t physical anymore. I don’t like being a mattress stuffer.
There should be some sort of free and open source payment system with no central party in charge at all.
there is GNU Taler but nobody use it right now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Taler
That’s because it’s only available in like one country, afawa.
My geography is rusty. Where is afawa?
North of afaik
This is the most American thing I have ever read.
It means as far as we’re aware.
We? How many of you are there?
Man I’ve heard afaik and afaict but never before have I heard anyone use afawa lol
How is that even possible if there’s no central party in charge‽
Because not many businesses/countries have signed up to it. We said “available” when we perhaps should have said “used” but you hopefully understand us better now.
We’ve had Twint for over a decade in Switzerland and it’s adopted everywhere here, I have no idea why every country is cooking their own new system right now.
Pick one that works already and roll it out on the whole continent, it’s not that hard.
That’s Wero. It’s basically iDEAL in a new jacket.
Apparently owned by PEPSI 🤭
And iDEAL is really good. Everyone in the Netherlands uses it.
We’ve had it for twenty years yet no one adapted it
Other countries also have their own systems since long… MBway in Portugal is also more than a decade old.
I think every country has its own, Italy has the Bancomat network for example - but you can’t pay online with it. Then we have Satispay, which works like in China, with QR codes. Satispay is quite huge in Italy.
Because Switzerland is not in the EU and the ECB won’t let that happen. They’d rather have the yanks ripping them off than allow real competition.
Protectionism sucks.
I’m pretty sure it’s Switzerland that doesn’t want to join the EU and not the other way around
Eh? I never said they did. They just have a very well built financial system. Unlike the EU.
That’s a ridiculous claim as several EU countries have their own systems, which they are trying to make interoperable between them in some cases or merge into Wero in others.
Yeah, the single market for goods is well established. The same cannot be said for services.
In NZ we’ve had electronic card payments outside of the credit card system for about 40-something years.
It just took a long time to catch up to online payments, but it’s slowly getting there.
Isn’t Twint still going through Visa for the in-store purchase? I remember reading it somewhere, but can’t find the source for it unfortunately, but in general whenever it is an option I prefer that over other means of payment, the only strange thing is having a separate twint app for each bank lol
Nope, Twint is connected directly to your Bank. Neither Visa, nor Mastercard nor anyone else is playing middleman. Every Swiss Bank has their own Twint App which directly connects to your account.
When you pay at a store or person to person with Twint it’s a direct transaction.
Twint is indeed directly connect to my bank … specifically to the VISA credit card account.
Not sure if it’s a bank specific, but on my UBS account TWINT is linked to the VISA credit card account (and I don’t see any option to change that). So every transaction goes through VISA.
Mmmm on my UBS account I have it connected directly to the account itself, you can probably change that via More --> Settings --> Manage payment methods
Thanks! I’ll look into that!
Twint isn’t really an alternative. Swiss cards still use the visa/mastercard networks.
Twint does not use Visa or Mastercard at all, it’s connected to your bank account and works with QR codes, NFC and Phone Numbers.
That’s what i’m saying, it’s just like Wero but slightly more advanced, a way to pay without using your card.
Are you still using physical cards? I haven’t used a physical card in years since NFC has been commonplace.
Most of the time I use Apple Pay in person. However sometimes they don’t accept it online so I have to use my card.
When I said “pay without using your card” I meant online, because I’ve never used Twint in a physical shop.
Are yon never buying stuff at a local butcher shop, flower truck or at a farmers store (Hofladen)? Most of them only take cash or Twint here.
I prefer to pay w/ cash in this case. I don’t know why tbh.
Pick one that works already and roll it out on the whole continent, it’s not that hard.
Twint is working on that, just in a more federation-style way than “pick one”.
The European Mobile Payment Systems Association (EMPSA) aims for interoperability between its various members across Europe. So you can use your country’s app with the systems in other countries.
Looking at the members list, there’s Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Poland, Bulgaria, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, Romania, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Albania currently on the list.
It seems the German/Austrian, Swiss, and Italian solutions have already been made interoperable based on their milestone showcase.
As an American, please do. If you start using other platforms, that will loosen Visa and MasterCard’s hold everywhere, and I unfortunately don’t see America doing shit about it ourselves, so if you start, we might also be able to.
A Canadian alternative is desperately needed too.
at least we have debit…
Lets create a distributed fediverse alternative lol
More banks and businesses should support Taler.
If Visa/Mastercard get replaced by another company’s centralized payment system, what prevent a large foreign corp from buying it, like they regularily do? Then we’re back to square one.
If you change to different centralized payment systems, they will eventually devolve into oligopolies/monopoly as well. In order to make a final solution that works forever, you need a free/open protocol like GNU_Taler
Isn’t that what WERU is all about; "The service competes with PayPal, credit cards and similar services. "?
It’s WERO and afaik they don’t issue cards. If you want to make in-store payments you’re stuck with visa of mastercard.
visa of mastercard.
If I understand correctly that will be all phased out. #e quote
What will be?
I just edited my comment for clarity.
Do you have a source for that?
I kind of doubt this. Even if we had a European (or any) alternatives, which we don’t, merchants will still want to be able to accept payments from tourists with these cards.
I think we are talking about different things. Many European online and card payments in Europe run via Visa/ Mastercard In USA.
Weru by the EPI, is a new internal payment system in Europe for payments by Europeans which is being rolled out in many EU contries, without visa Mastercard payment settlements.
A tourist can always pay with Visa/ Mastercard in Europe or USA. That’s another matter. Wiithin Europe for Europeans that won’t no longer be necessary
We use Belgian Bancontact, not visa/MasterCard here
Please, make it available to Americans. I want to buy my hentai, and uphold the social contract with my fellow perverts.
A lot of countries have instant payments already. It is surprising there isn’t more push towards using this at least.
Norway has BankAxept I believe. Fully homegrown, works just like visa.
Every country in Europe has its own payment system, that’s kind of the whole point
Fully dependent on Mastercard and Visa here in the Baltics for an example.
Italy has Bancomat, but still. We need a system that’s interoperable in the whole Europe.
Wero and iDeal seem promising.
Wero works great
Those are owned by the major banks, European banks, sure, but still private. Payment systems like these operate like private tax collection, levying a regressive tax on all transactions which flow through them. That’s from transaction fees which exceed the cost of processing said transaction.
I would much rather have a state-owned payment processor, which operates at cost, or is even completely funded by taxes. The extra tax revenue that would generate from increased economic activity would far outweigh its cost.
And neither has a card available, they’re more of a convenient frontend for your regular ol’ bank transfers.
Portugal already has their own payment processor, even started being exported to Romania
We need a cross-EU one. WERO and Gnu Taler seem like the best candidates. Honestly, Gnu Taler will probably be ignored because banks can’t take advantage by invading privacy.
I’d actually rather see many federated solutions with cross-EU interoperability instead of making yet another payment monopoly
Isn’t WERO built aroung SEPA Instant Credit Transfer?
Gnu Taler seems really interesting, if the trial in Switzerland goes well it might have a chance. I’m still hopeful we can have nice things.
Huh, Taler sounds interesting. How does it prevent doublespends?
Why not both? Monopolies for banking aren’t a great idea.
Wasn’t that already explained?
Honestly, Gnu Taler will probably be ignored because banks can’t take advantage by invading privacy.
