Have you seen the new money app? It's on Tubu. It's on Weeno. I'm on Dippy but my friend is on Poob. Poob has it for you.

When Canada legalized weed in 2018, the US administration made it clear that they can ban Canadians from the US for life if they have used marijuana in the past. The administration alluded to looking at Canadian's transaction history to facilitate cracking down on this more harshly[1].

It was so clear at that point to me how badly sovereign payments and banking is so needed. FATCA is a thing, I get it, I get the motivation- but allow another country to wield a "cooperation" like a weapon to attack Canada's sovereignty is just further evidence that we need to safeguard our data.

[1] https://globalnews.ca/news/4461315/will-your-cannabis-credit...

When the telcos tried to compete with the cloud providers by offering OpenStack they learned the business wasn't as simple as offering 10-15 services with some racks. I can imagine the same hidden complexity for payment rails

On the other hand regulations have taken too much power away from merchants and Wero could succeed with more merchant friendly terms. They are doing 3-legged payments so they are not subject to as many European regulations as Visa/Mastercard.

It describes a consolidation of _online_ payment systems that are currently quite fragmented in the EU. It does nothing about in-store payments. Direct debit cards (10x as popular as credit cards in the EU) are often still MC/Visa powered, and the fastest way to pay contactless (even if that is via Apple Pay).

Source(German): https://netzpolitik.org/2026/uneingeloestes-versprechen-auf-...

Focus this year is on P2P transfers. Commerce is targeted for 2027. Given EuroPA has done a token amount of transactions to date, I’m not sure anyone should hold their breaths.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment)

That could be a massive hassle for American tourists, who will still mostly have Visa and Mastercard. I'm sure that there will be some kind of solution -- I suspect Google Pay and Apple Pay will support the new network. But I'll have to keep an eye out.

I might even have to start bringing cash. I used to make that the very first thing I did on landing. The last few times I didn't get any cash at all.

https://www.taler.net/en/index.html

And even those of us who have activated it, have hardly used it for the most part, or hve concerns.

And also, Wero (unlike something like PayPal), is integrated in your bank's app, for (almost) all participating banks

[0] (Warning: French) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paylib

All that being said, it’s great for consumers to have the choice, and hopefully we all benefit from increased competition.

Disclaimer: I work for a Payment Gateway

What is currently happening is the solving of instant cross-border P2P transfers, which sounds like a very niche problem. Online payments are mostly a solved problem because payment gateways like Adyen or Stripe already support local payment systems.

I can’t tell if this is going to replace Visa/Mastercard or be offered in addition to Visa/Mastercard to handle transactions for locals while still allowing transactions to be viable for everyone else who might be passing through.

When you release a bull in a china shop all you end up with is a lot of broken china, extensive cleanup work, and a steep bill.

There are still many obstacles ahead: Contactless payments (Apple does not provide any card emulation NFC access to the Apple Watch, for example, and only limited access to iPhones), chargeback handling, offline payments (a recent priority of the EU under the larger umbrella of digital resiliency), and of course the network effect of the existing millions of terminals, ATMs, and cards in the field.

epi acquired idealo (in the Netherlands, and payconiq in Belgium/Luxembourg), slapped the wero brand on it, and announced proudly they have x million customers.

wero as a brand has close to 0 market recognition, and with idealo and payconiq they butchered some of the systems (in the name of consolidation) so badly that incidents have become the norm (and security wise ...yikes!).

Worth mentioning that epi is just the latest attempt at a pan-European payment system, the previous attempts, the Monnet project and PEPSI, failed miserably after wasting billions (tens of billions?) and ...it doesn't repeat, it rhymes.

I wish we could replace visa/mastercard but epi is absolutely not the solution, imho.

Will these new systems remove the middle man skimming that MasterCard/Visa has been doing to small businesses?

What I like about a credit card are things like you are buying on credit, not using money in your account directly. So in the case of fraud or issue a chargeback it's been much easier to get credit card transactions reverted rather than get money put back into my debit account.

Also I like credit cards for the rewards, cash back or especially travel points. But also things like extended warranty coverage and other perks.

But I am confused about how this relates to Visa and Mastercard. Those systems are used for payments between parties that have not necessarily established trust.

How do you use this when paying online?

Is there the equivalent of an "Apple Pay" button on merchant website for those based in EU?

(Or a Pix button, when in Brazil, etc?)

I suppose some added sovereignty is to be expected when your closest ally extorts, threatens annexation and slams you with tariffs.

Europe collectively is a US vassal state, not just in tech. As an example, if someone in Switzerland Venmos someone in the Netherland with a description of "Cuba" or even "Cuban" (sandwich), the payment could be delayed or you could be banned entirely [1]. Why should a payment between two Europeans in Europe be entangled with US sanctions?

The danger here for European "tech emancipation" is that the US government will get involved and fight the fights for US companies. The United Fruit Company was the poster child for this where the US deposed the Guatemalan government in 1954 and the 60+ years of Cuban sanctions are basically because the UFC was cheating on Cuban taxes.

Brazil's Pix (IMHO) will come under the pressure of this on behalf of Visa/Mastercard that may include trade retaliation and other forms of pressure and the US government will argue that Pix is "illegally" subsidized by the government. Europe's payment systems will face the same attacks.

[1]: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/matthewzeitlin/be-caref...

Wero is not and will not be a card network will all its features so not a real competitor.

Also, currently the perfect alternative for european is instant transferts (and openbanking) that was imposed by EU to banks. That is the working quite well and the equivalent to Pix in my opinion.

But, especially for OpenBanking, european banks have done everything to block open systems like that, that gives more control to consumers.

So, here comes Wero, the goal is for the most awful legacy Europeans banks to create a new monopoly under their control. They use the "instant transfer" network, they sugar coat that with a proprietary stack to match phone number/emails with iban accounts and to give each other a few exemptions of 2 factors confirmations and so. But access to the network and protocols will be secret and kept for themselves to prevent fintech and competitors to disrupt their grip on consumer money spendings.

If you look at it, Wero is not an innovative stack, it is the usual java shit that you find in the old banks. The kind that make your bank app a real pain in the ass with stupid limitations.

I run Lineage is, want backups on my own NAS. I have a feeling that if I want this European payment app I need to accept backing up my data on an American cloud.

(I've nothing against Google really. But I want my backups at home.)

Protecting Rule of International Law against Rule of Trump Ukazi has become necessary.

Pretty amazing!

Insane that a developing country has something so seemless, and meanwhile in the USA my credit card number is stolen online every 3 to 5 years, necessitating cancellations and in some cases (as with Chase) I had to close the entire account as they could not stop the fraud even after issuing 5 new cards over the space of 6 months--somehow the new card authorizations were being ported automatically into some subscription systems.

Will it always be smartphone only, or will there be other options?

I've read about the problems kids (eg, 10 year olds) are having in the countries which have gone mostly cash-free when they don't have a smartphone or debit card to use for otherwise normal and age-appropriate transactions.

I can't help but think that by switching even more of the economy to smartphone-based solutions then kids will have even more restricted purchasing autonomy.

To say nothing of people like me who don't have and don't want to have a smart phone.

Europe needs to be functionally as independent as possible.

Wero is owned by the banks from worst EU countries - Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands.

In my country, we call them New Middle East.

Yeah, no way I would support this in my business.

They will ban you for things they don't "like" in their countries.

Like free speech, gun manufacturing and exporting to Ukraine.

Being anti illegal immigrants etc.

(legal immigrants are great, like Ukranians, Belarusians, even Russians if they burn their passport, haha)

I see 10 people in my address book that I could theoretically send money via Wero. Hundreds of people in my address book have a Visa or a MasterCard. It's not a bad thing to have competition and ambition, but to say goodbye is premature to say the least. Online payments especially between regular people (so not businesses) are still dominated by PayPal. And even online shopping is dominated by PayPal although Apple and Google Pay are taking a bigger slice because it's just so convenient. And they're just again using Visa and MasterCard.

I'm not sure Wero was developed to be very practical. I registered with my phone number, but now have second thoughts because I don't want to give my phone number to strangers when buying on second hand marketplaces. But guess what - you cannot change it. You cannot register a second number. It just feels very rigid in its design.

There were other systems already that were supposed to do the same. Girocard/EC... All dead and buried now.

pix as already proven in Brazil - is faster. this system again will be faster & secure & more convenient with less fees.

Unfortunately EU officials also can not be trusted. They are indeed weak. So we all know in the long run, the USA always gets favourable deals and Europans are kept as proxy-payers here. Germany in particular has a very unhealthy love affair going with the USA; to some extent this is understandable due to an export-centric industry, but now there is a recession and Germany still thinks it'll go away soon, "just don't change anything". Timid rabbits, with Merz being the uber-rabbit that just does nothing useful on his own. Other than risking being a loudmouth before he was elected - and now germans are very unhappy with his performance.

When I get blasted with this: https://i.imgur.com/oeGU3qd.png

I really don't know what to do. I can't read so much. Bounce.

In the EUSSR1