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.
It would be awesome if my euros weren’t physical anymore. I don’t like being a mattress stuffer.
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
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.
Other countries also have their own systems since long… MBway in Portugal is also more than a decade old.
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!
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.
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.
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.
How the fuck does Europe not have it’s own payment system yet?
For one, visa and all the other US payment systems, suuuuuck. I never understood why nobody came up with something better, this just seems lazyness.
Buy hey, better late than never
The advantage of Visa/Mastercard is that they work anywhere.
Europeans are rich and like to travel all over the world, so they want their cards to work everywhere too. Or order stuff online from abroad. Why bother using some local payment processor that barely works if you can just use your Visa card?
Independent payment systems only work in countries that are poor (where people don’t travel or buy stuff from abroad) and/or isolated by sanctions or internal restrictions.
the EU has the power to legislate that their version be offered in a non-discriminatory way anywhere cards with comparable fees are offered… similar to requirements to accept Euros etc
i could for sure see that having a “globally” requirement tacked onto it, arguing that if it’s implemented in Europe and is comparable or better for fees then it’s discriminatory rather than economic to not offer it elsewhere
Europeans are rich and like to travel all over the world,
Or just 100 km to cross the border and it’s already another country. Or if you live in a border town, it might be a short walk lol
France still has one. It’s called CB (Carte Bleue) and is working alongside Visa and Mastercard. Notoriously, some years ago Visa was down for a day and it impacted lots of countries except France because everyone fell back to the CB Network.
Also in Italy with Bancomat. But still, wouldn’t it be nice if you could use a European card across all Europe?
A lot of countries in Europe have widely used country-specific payment systems.
The problem is those which don’t as well as the system of one country not being usable in other European countries so it falls back to VISA or Mastercard to use your card when abroad or for online purchases from businesses based in other countries.
How the fuck does Europe not have it’s own payment system yet?
Europe has everything of its own. But it’s almost always country-specific.
The same like with EVs :) ceos could cut off profits without worrying about innovation
Btw in Poland we blik, as I remember 6 polish banks has equal shares and 1/7 has mastercard.
At least there some profit stays in Eu…
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?
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.
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.
Wero and iDeal seem promising.
And neither has a card available, they’re more of a convenient frontend for your regular ol’ bank transfers.
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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.
A Canadian alternative is desperately needed too.
at least we have debit…
Taiwan let’s you use your metro card to buy stuff at 711. Seems reasonable to expand that out
Please, make it available to Americans. I want to buy my hentai, and uphold the social contract with my fellow perverts.
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.
I also have Amex and Discover… oh wait
Paywalled, and archive.is doesn’t seem to work for this site
A lot of countries have instant payments already. It is surprising there isn’t more push towards using this at least.
In the meantime it would also help if existing laws would finally be enforced. It is clear that transferring european payment data into the USA cannot be legal under GDPR. We know that all of those “privacy shield” regulations are dead under Trump. There are good reasons to suspect that Visa and Mastercard are abusing their duopoly as payment processor - and there are laws against monopoly abuses.
That’s so true!
