I used Wero for the first time yesterday, and I found it very easy to link to my bank account (just one click on a pop-up). The app is really convenient.

I visited their website and discovered that Wero is currently available in most banks in France, Belgium, and Germany. Their goal is to create a payment system across all of Europe, enabling online payments, in-store payments, or even replacing IBAN transfers.

Wero website

" Wero is part of the European Payments Initiative (EPI), supported by 14 major European banks and the two largest payment processors in Europe. Our goal is to create a new payment system for Europe, for the future."

I think Wero could replace Visa and Mastercard in our daily payments. I would like to hear your thoughts on this. If you are in France, Belgium, or Germany, you can activate it. Initially, this will support the project, as it is not yet fully functional to replace the payment methods of all European countries.

  • Teppichbrand ( Teppichbrand@feddit.org ) 
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    2 years ago

    I learned that they use Instant Payment from one IBAN to another. I can already fire up my banking app and send instant money to your IBAN in 30 seconds. So why do we need a middle man for that? Isn’t that just another company between my bank account and you’re bank account, making something that already exist a little bit more convenient? Who pays them?

    • Krok_Gazon ( Krok_Gazon@feddit.uk ) OP
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      Wero is aiming for EU-wide interoperability, so you don’t have to worry about whether your bank supports it or if cross-border transfers are a hassle. Also, not all banks offer instant transfers for free. Wero will remove that friction while keeping merchants, not users, on the hook for fees, just like card networks, but European. (For now banks are paying) Wero is not a middle man but a standardised platform (like Visa or Mastercard)

  • lostbit ( lostbit@feddit.nl ) 
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    2 years ago

    yup its based on the popular dutch payment service iDEAL

    funny enough because we have such a good working system already we will be the last to be plugged in lol. Somewhere in 2026 iDEAL will be replaced with it

    • Krok_Gazon ( Krok_Gazon@feddit.uk ) OP
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      This is the case for many banks; we are in a trial period. For example, in Belgium, at ING, Wero has almost entirely replaced Payconiq (national payment method), while it seems that ING NL is still using iDEAL. It can be read in certain articles that the central bank of the Netherlands is awaiting the success of Wero’s implementation in the test territory before replacing iDEAL in the Netherlands.

      • Interesting. Almost everything that I have ever seen in belgium uses bancontact. Online shops all over Benelux, Germany, and even some in Poland use bancontact. P2P bank transfers are far and away done with it too.

        All of the ATMs over a ton of Flanders just got switched to bancontact ATMs also. It doesn’t seem like that is being replaced anytime soon.

        I have never even heard of wero until this thread 😅

  • wero is a joke on so many levels. for one they require you to have an account with either scumbags google or apple to even download their app. it is not the gsf but that they do not offer a direct download of the app. so much about privacy. second volksbank is involved and they are scumbags too because their branch DZB prevented an alternative to visa. fuck em.

  • adamhepner ( adamhepner@szmer.info ) 
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    2 years ago

    How does it stack against polish Blik? That one is supported by possibly every bank in Poland, all payment gateways, POS, mobile app, and so on. Hell, I purchased steam games with Blik, and if I see a shop not supporting it,I don’t do business. Like, even tiny businesses in Poland that didn’t bother to get card terminals in the past, I can pay with Blik. I use it to pay for my son’s swimming lessons, cleaning services, i recently used it to withdraw cash from ATM - unnecessarily, because the place I was going of course accepted Blik. I bought my mother flowers on the other end of the country using just sms and blik… and all that without fancy marketing, shit just works.

    • Krok_Gazon ( Krok_Gazon@feddit.uk ) OP
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      It is obvious that there are many ways to make digital payments, to the point that each European country has its own payment network.

      Wero’s current goal is neither to replace your bank nor to become a company that controls your money. In my view, Wero should be seen as a payment network, similar to Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, etc.

      If BLIK (which I am not familiar with) works well for you, that’s great. Wero will probably not replace it but rather to act as an additional layer.

      The main advantage lies in European interoperability. If you travel to another European country, BLIK will probably be of no use to you (it appears to rely on the Visa or Mastercard network, depending on the bank, for payments outside of Poland). As a Belgian, if I want to use Bancontact outside of Belgium, I either have to withdraw cash before my trip, pay transaction fees for each payment, or use my Mastercard. In this regard, Wero seems to be a relevant solution.

      What do you think?

      • adamhepner ( adamhepner@szmer.info ) 
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        2 years ago

        It seems to me that in country blik is using a joint company wherein the banks have stake, as well as Mastercard has a stake. Outside of Poland Mastercard is the “transport layer” so to say.

        If then Wero wants to be an implementation of this lower-lever transaction network,thais is good news, as it can be probably integrated in parallel/addition to Mastercard when we have a falling out. But it’s not the impression that I hot from the website- to me it appeared as a consumer application.

  • Is this like bancontact?

    https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancontact (sorry, English version was shit)

    Bancontact in Benelux has mostly replaced bank transfers and online payments. They are in Germany I think too. The only downside is they seem like not a great company doing things like seemingly making deals with all of the Belgian banks to get rid of their ATMs in every city with special bancontact ATMs at special bancontact locations.