These all require Google or Apple devices both by the seller and the buyer. Wero explicitly does not even support non-Google Android devices.
I'm not sure that replacing Visa and MasterCard is really that big of a sovereignty move considering the pervasive dominance American mobile OS tech has. It's a much harder ecosystem to replace.
Updating an app to not require the Play Store is a lot easier than switching payment provider backend.
Wero can fix the dependency on Google in a day, I don't think the dependency on Google is as bad as the broader dependency on Mastercard/Visa is.
That said, I'd much prefer a European implementation of the same remote attestation APIs that Google uses to convince payment processors that phones can be trusted to manage finances.
On iOS you don't really have a choice so until someone runs Linux on an iPhone, iPhone users are just screwed.
> I'd much prefer a European implementation of the same remote attestation APIs that Google uses to convince payment processors that phones can be trusted to manage finances.
You're basically talking about "government Android phone" since it is built into the chips on the device.
I wonder how 330 million average Europeans will respond to not being able to use iPhones or Google Android phones anymore because they are instead being forced to use "government Android phone" for safety from USA.
I think they'll actually just revolt against the government instead
Heartily agree, even for Americans. I realize there's economies of scale and network effects, I'm not a libertarian, but the US electronic money situation is very bad. No pressure to innovate, be secure, be anonymous, and a small number of business people (out of touch CxOs) arbitrarily debank people and market segments.
> I'm not sure that replacing Visa and MasterCard is really that big of a sovereignty move considering the pervasive dominance American mobile OS tech has
So 'having an apple or Google phone' is equivalent to you to 'have every individual payment processed by visa/mastercard'?
Processing a payment means knowing who sent what to whom. I'm sure you don't care if I know what phone you have. But can I see every bank transaction you make? Every single purchase? No biggie, right?
Aside from the fact that this is maybe the next dependency to drop.
They don't though, unless I'm missing something stupid there is parity across all national options. And here for example the bank itself has Bancomat AND Visa as an option to pay by at a POS or online etc.
This will allow me to use my card online with a merchant in Germany for example and use my Bancomat process (whatever the new interface is called) will be the gateway.
The hardware is harder to replace, but payment systems aren’t intrinsically tied to the operating systems, yet, except for encryption , which is handled on-device.
So many people commenting that seem to miss what this is. It's the merging of national systems to simply allow a second option. Meaning no influence oversize from the duopoly. See steam news with visa for an example of then throwing their weight.
Nevertheless, that app could be one day running with F-Droid and such... or that's what I dream. The infrastructure is only one piece of the huge dependency puzzle.
Apple and Google are bound to Visa/Mastercard's rules. There is basically no EC without the V/M, and Apple and Google won't be happy just selling hardware. How are you paying for your apps and services ?
Looking at it from the privacy lens doesn't help when it's a matter of directly controlling the money flow.
Well... no so much in practice. My bank automatically enrolled my personal phone number into the system. I asked them to remove it 2 months ago. One month ago I received a reply that they're working on it. I may be the only person in this country that asked for this - they're now probably thinking which is cheaper: to pay the GDPR fine, repeatedly, or patch their banking software and re-certify it, or maybe refuse to have me as their client.
Anyway, I don't know if you actually read GDPR, but the government (& various agencies) and the bank are both exempted from GDPR. They will all know everything I bought through this system, from where and at what price.
One thing I'd like to check: what are the actual exclusion rules for these systems? The Visa/MC threat to anything deemed vaguely adult content is well documented, but what is and is not allowed on Wero?
I use this system daily. It's the spanish/european venmo. In some countries all banks apps are in this system, so it shows which phone contacts are in the system and you can send or request money through that.
It's just this nice thing for sending money. Why are you all losing your marbles here?
Mastercard pretty much depended on Eurocard/Europay for it's European reach (and vice versa) before the 2 merged, European institutions didn't have a problem selling out important infrastructure because Europeans overall trusted American stability and cooperation.
And this seems to be another attempt at that. We already had the European Payments Initiative (with Wero), and now they are starting the European Network for Payments. Sounds like the People's Front of Judea vs. the Judean People's Front.
Edit: There was also the Euro Alliance of Payment Schemes
Since Wero (that is included in the new initiative) already has a mass from Germany and France, including Spanish and Italian operators more or less locks down something without major competition inside the EU market creating something universally useful that now has a large enough mass to become the defacto standard.
Notably absent is Swish (that is probably the oldest banking-backed mobile payment app in Europe operating since 2012), they were kind-of-interested in cross-transactions when the Vipps/Mobilepay merger also connected with some Finnish party but iirc nothing happend.
No idea if it was due to hubris and protecting their own market or feeling that technology matching was problematic (Swish has a bunch of features like corporate reciving/payouts, payment-requests,birthday cards, receiver identification,etc that might or might not mesh well with foreign providers).
Usually, a product that costs $100 costs me the same $100 regardless of the payment processors involved (and $100 cash when none are involved), so I can't see where "lower prices for consumers" could come from.
I've seen few places accepting only cash or cards from a local payment processor. And it looks like local payment processor takes about 0.16% from each transaction.
So I assume that if they were accepting more expensive cards, they might've increase the price of the $100.16 product for me, to offset their costs.
And yes, I also heard that payment processors have rules that require merchants to have the same price no matter what payment processor (or cash) customer will choose.
well, I mean, lower prices can come if merchants stop supporting Visa/Mastercard and support only cheaper options :)
Alternatively, merchants can give users more cashback points for using their preferred way of paying. Not sure how this flies with payment processor rules, but I've seen it in the wild.
In this case, people who don't have local cheaper option won't be able to buy from them.
Cash/local-card-only might be OK for a grocery store in rural area only serving the locals, less so for a coffee shop in tourist centre of a major city.
There are many other options already besides Visa and Mastercard. What I'm asking and nobody wants to answer is what the benefits for users are. The first thing you should think about when making a new product or service.
People are only answering me here with benefits for European politicians and their sovereignty. That's alright. But what I'm asking about is benefits for the users.
For example, Visa and Mastercard offer fraud protection to the users, and many card emitters offer cashback to their users. Can this new European system offer this? If not, why not? Can they offer something else which benefits the user over current providers?
> What I'm asking and nobody wants to answer is what the benefits for users are.
I answered that it will lower prices, does that not count as a benefit to users?
Even if merchants pay the processing fees, those prices are inevitably passed onto their customers. With more competition among payment processors there will be pressure to lower processing fees.
All of this happens automatically. It’s the beauty of markets.
I’ll rephrase your own question in a different way that I think actually supports my point: Since there is no difference, as a product, between visa, Mastercard, and this new European alliance, then there is very little reason to not want more competition.
Payment processing is essentially a commodity in this sense. It’s all the same, with the differentiator being supply. If we increase the supply the price will go down. That’s it. It should honestly be stupid to not want a European alternative.
> I answered that it will lower prices, does that not count as a benefit to users?
Very fair point! Although we haven't seen it online after many years of national digital payment systems in Europe.
The only places where I've actually see discounts offered for non-card payments is in physical small businesses if you ask for a discount for this kind of payment. Places like the mechanics. But such payment isn't cross-border.
> It should honestly be stupid to not want a European alternative.
More options are always better, but to me it seems that the benefit for the customer is always forgotten in these projects. The customer is king, and only the most hardcore EU loyalists would actively hurt their own interests just to follow things like this.
The problem with your argument is that the price to the consumer stays the same, regardless of the payment processor involved (or cash when none are involved.) These are the rules set by payment processors. With these rules, the prices will stay the same with any amount of the supply. If these rules are changed, all payment processors will suffer in cash's favour, and as governments oppose cash-based economy for tax maximisation, the change of the rules is unlikely.
We may be talking past each other. If card processing costs a business money, that cost is passed onto the consumer. It therefore stands to reason that the converse is also true with savings. The question remaining is just at what time scale.
I think you’re taking about a single transaction in the near future, whereas I’m talking about the effects which are felt, in aggregate, over a long period of time. Absolutely things will get slightly cheaper.
It currently costs 100€ to buy something. 90% of their customers pay card and the rest cash. Their profit margin is 5% and the payment processor takes 2%, leaving 93% other costs not part of this discussion.
Now, the same item is still 100€ but some Europeans are paying with their cards by these cheaper payment processors. They charge only 1% per transaction. Also half of the card payers use these rather than the status quo. Therefore the merchant gains a percentage of profit on 45% of their transactions.
They can now lower their price to compete better. So the new price becomes something like 99.55€ for everybody: cash, visa, European cards.
Then, visa and Mastercard will lower their prices, to not lose customers in Europe, matching them, and now the price has fully gone to 99€, for everyone.
In Italy the price is the same by law regardless of how you pay. So it stands to reason savings go to the merchants and eventually the customers, rather than having a multi-tier price.
Too many things have to line up exactly the way you imagine for this to happen, and I think your scenario is too optimistic as a result. Specifically, the merchants "can now lower their price" but they might not do it, especially considering that the costs of integration with this system are probably non-zero for them.
Wizz is a Hungarian (so: European) airline (since 2003) and girocard is a German (so: European) instant low-fee payment system (it's been rebranded in 2007 from EC-Karte that existed since 1960s). At this moment, as far as I'm aware, you cannot pay for your Wizz ticket with girocard (they only accept Visa/MC/Amex or "co-branded" girocards.)
The price difference would have to be significantly more than 1 to 3% to justify the inconvenience of carrying around cash again for me as a consumer for the things I don't buy online. Also don't underestimate the benefits of not dealing with cash for the merchants either. After cash usage almost vanishing completely they made it mandatory to accept cash a couple of years ago in Norway in an attempt to keep the infrastructure on life support in case of crisis (but still illegal for big transactions like cars and houses because something something crime). At least one hairdresser chain notably resolved it by only accepting pre booked appointments, which you could only get along pre paying for them in an app.
YMMV, but I still carry cash and find no inconvenience in this. Cash is never out of battery, never out of software support, and unaffected by AWS outages, cellular outages, or electricity outages. I also don't install apps that are supposed to make life convenient for others but not me. WRT that hairdresser chain, I suppose I'd simply use a different hairdresser that would accept both walk-ins and cash, and I'd hope there's no shortage of such.
There are not many other options already besides Visa/MC for their payment network, not the branding. Interbank account transfers with instant settlement are clumsy.
The change is that newer financial systems, using ISO20022, run at bank level, allow instant net settlement between individual accounts, not just settlement at the bank level.
So the benefits to merchants/customers compared to Visa/MC:
Merchants
* Interchange is much cheaper, because the banks transact via the central clearing house which is usually sponsored by the country's reserve bank
* It allows for the merchant to set up direct debit payment structures that allow for things like subscriptions and other payments to be made with similar network and transaction fee savings
* It has all of the advantages of EFT and CC payments
* It can use QR codes, email addresses, and mobile numbers as identifiers, so it is much easier to pass on payment details. Merchants can operate with just a printed QR code, verifying payment on the customer's mobile.
Customers
* Banks can offer all of the same "perks" of credit cards, like lines of credit, branding, account holder offers.
* They can offer things like product insurance and return protection and similar consumer protections.
The "rails" are much cheaper to run and suits a 21st century financial system and is easier and more secure for consumers.
What banks "can offer" is irrelevant until they offer it in practice.
As a customer, I have zero interest in paying for my lunch via "QR codes, email addresses, and mobile numbers" when I can do it with near-zero friction with a double-click on a phone (funded by a credit card), or with a tap or swipe of the credit card. I also have better protections. Switching costs are non-zero and I will only switch if there are some substantial benefits; pure "feature parity" is a reason to not switch.
The benefits to merchants are tangential to me, but there is a substantial downside of all the merchants having to do integration with an additional system.
These systems have been rolling out across Asia and EU and other places.
If CCs were the system of the last 75 years to allow quick transactions, these systems are the next generation.
The US is a specific banking market that has a very embedded structure, regulation, and players. Other nations have a more flexible financial system that allows for services to develop that are better than the existing Visa/MC duopoly.
This is just the next step of allowing them to operate cross-border/jurisdiction.
The fact that you have zero interest does not mean there are many small merchants and customers that find the ability to easily transfer money instantly with very low fees and the same safety as cash is a very useful service.
Instant settlement. The new systems usually run at the level of the reserve currency, or highest national bank.
In Australia the system is the NPP, and the public face is Osko/PayID, so you can use an email or mobile identifier to instantly transfer money between people's accounts. Australia is rolling out PayTo, which is a B2C form of direct debit, which is revocable by the customer but allows for subscriptions and other payments.
The next step will be offering a bank account with PayID/PayTo, a contactless form of payment stored in a Google/Apple/Samsung Wallet, and a line of credit.
Which is all that a credit card is.
This announcement is about similar national systems evolving into cross-European payments. So an instant payment from a French bank account to a Spanish bank account via contactless payment terminal without using the Visa/MC "rails".
In Thailand it's promptpay
Agreed. That seems to be a tangible benefit, but only for cross-border transactions between individuals and not for purchases. Since purchases are already instantly settled for the user. And domestic individual to individual transactions are already easy with the current systems.
And from the article it seems that some non-Euro currencies will also be offered in this new system. Which is a tangible user benefit.
Otherwise, in the past ~10 years I haven't had any problem with cross border EUR transfers using SEPA or even non-EUR transfers using services like Wise. And if it's an individual to individual transfer then instant settlement isn't as necessary as when it's a purchase.
> Which is all that a credit card is.
Credit and debit cards also offer fraud protection and many times cashback as well. Especially on cross-border transactions (ie online shopping), the fraud protection is essential. I have never used a credit card in my life, but a Visa/Mastercard debit card is one of the most practical things the modern world offers.
If they follow the Swish/Vipps method, it's usually connected to your phone so it both enables p2p payments (that Visa/Mastercard doesn't offer), but also QR-code based payments (scan-and-sign) that are complexity-wise about the same as Apple-pay,etc (usually with a bit higher security requirements).
You can't convince millions of users to switch from one payment method to another by the "weaponised" and "reliance" and "essential security" arguments. These arguments might work on me but not on my parents nor my children (who do not care much about these but do care about having a universally accepted payment method which is easy and safe to use.)
The question here is "what is the benefit to individual users," not "what is the benefit to the users community as a whole."
In case of IBAN:
Wero is just another user/function layer on top of SEPA, adding things like "sent money by email or phone number", as they are the aggregator putting this function live,since this functionality was not supposed to be part of SEPA standard.
Why do you need a stablecoin if you can send the currency itself directly? If I have euros and the recipient wants euros, why would I need a stablecoin?
Not only is it a solution looking for a problem but it also opens up exchange fees and chance to be more easily robbed by North Korean government backed hackers looking to evade sanctions.
Some years ago I had to execute an international money transfer by SWIFT to someone in South America from our European bank:
Unfortunately, I did a copy & paste error by reusing the prior version and not overwriting all the data - I forgot to replace the bank account number, but name & co was OK.
The money didnt arrive, customer was getting angrier and angrier. Esp. since this transaction was related to crypto and back then was one of first BTC highflyertimes.
A couple of days later I received a message from the bank, asking for having a quick call. In the meantime, they had called the customer to investigate even more.
Quickly we found out that it was just my mistake by copying & re-using the form. I sent them a SWIFT message confirming what was discussed and that the right account number is indeed 123 instead of 678.
In the end, all of us were happy, even with a little delay.
Im 100% sure that this type of cooperation would never work on any of these crypto stacks :-))
Na, what you dont get it, is, how "classic" some banks working in some parts of their backend. Manual steps for non-standard-processes are quite often implemented.
Do not know what this realworld example has to with any of your specs? Apart from that, Im working in this field...
It's not for you. It's for companies. They're implementing it first for person-to-person transactions just to test the system. Wouldn't want a big corp to lose millions of euro because of a bug!
The old school banks in Europe (or everywhere?) are trash, correct, but the neobanks are arguably some of the best in the world (Revolut, Monzo, Starling, N26, also Wise, etc). And open banking, regulations against fees, strong consumer protection, etc, are all points against your concern that this’ll only favour merchants. I wouldn’t count on it.
I'm not sure that replacing Visa and MasterCard is really that big of a sovereignty move considering the pervasive dominance American mobile OS tech has. It's a much harder ecosystem to replace.
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