Can't we have cards for this? In Spain, for example, to use Bizum, you need either an Android/iOS smartphone (and for the Android case, as you use it from your bank's app, it would typically require some Google security assurances - so no Huawei phones allowed, for example) or logging into your bank's website and use Bizum from there, only if your bank allows you to use Bizum via web. And it's not very practical or convenient to do that when you're in a store and want to pay, in contrast to swiping your credit card.
So while I see very convenient gaining some sovereignty from American companies for these payments, I think we're losing it when we will need devices controlled by other American companies in order to use the new system.
What about being required to carry a your-own-government-controlled tracking device?
Because the US or Chine government can't harm me in Europe via the data they collect from me, But the EU authorities can if they want to, so naturally I fear them more if they were the ones hoovering my data.
What are the odds they're using this on-shore tech grab to implement their own domestic version of China's social credit score system, to easily get data on their own citizens who commit "wrong-think", without having to through the effort to twist the arm of US entities every time they want to do that?
Food for thought, but I do think we're living the last years of online anonymity, it's inevitable.
One only needs a few looks at what the EU Commission has been doing lately to see that if left unchecked their plan is a UK-like total surveillance state.
The article starts with Wero right off the bat, which a pan-European rebrand and continuation of the Dutch Ideal. The Dutch have been using Ideal everywhere, and you usually use that to pay online. It redirects you to your bank to acknowledge the transaction, and most bank have auth methods where a smartphone is optional. Most often used for sure, but optional, and you can complete the transaction with a hardware reader and your debit card as well.
The only exception are the neobanks like Bunq, which actually are smartphone-only. That one in particular is great if you appreciate the CEO and staff keeping a personal eye on your transactions (no kidding).
They sold their transaction platform as a service to Apple Pay. And funneled all your transaction data to palantir.
Financial networks are side channels for intelligence gathering. And that makes the folks doing them outside of your nation an adversary.
With the US choosing to become an enemy of western democracy in Europe, the need for more investment in building trusted core infrastructure is inevitable.
Certainly none of this is ever simple. But this is just a microcosm of a much larger shift across many industries in Europe and we as tech nerds should be mindful of the tectonic shifts that are happening currently. The capital investments occurring have serious long term implications for us all.
My point being, if these payment systems start becoming more interconnected and join within a standard, I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually saw Bizum cards around here, Wero cards in other places, and many more.
At least that's my take on it. Of course there's still a long way to go, such as developing the system, banks adopting it, businesses adopting it, then customers (which would probably take years, many people wouldn't bother switching at least until their current card expires)
[1] https://www.bbva.com/es/es/empresas/bbva-primer-banco-en-esp...
I don't know about Huawei, but actually most (all?) of the banking apps in Spain should work on a non-Google-certified Android builds. There's an community list tracking GrapheneOS compatibility at https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa... and all of them currently appear supported just fine.
https://www.androidauthority.com/why-i-use-grapheneos-on-pix...
> Police in Spain have reportedly started profiling people based on their phones; specifically, and surprisingly, those carrying Google Pixel devices. Law enforcement officials in Catalonia say they associate Pixels with crime because drug traffickers are increasingly turning to these phones. But it’s not Google’s secure Titan M2 chip that has criminals favoring the Pixel — instead, it’s GrapheneOS, a privacy-focused alternative to the default Pixel OS.
EDIT: Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44473694
But isn't the promise of Apple Pay that you never expose your real credit card # to the merchant? So they can't track you? I know Walmart in Canada really resisted Apple Pay for a few years because it would mean no more ability to track people by their payment methods.
What's an extra layer of surveillance? Why accept the "credit and debit" surveillance middlemen but not the google/apple middlenmen?
What the world needs are "cash cards". Something equivalent to cash not tied to your identity that you can use in the real and virtual world.
I simply do not understand why governments or the private sector do not provide such options.
How exactly are you doing that? with 3D Secure online credit card transactions now require confirmation in the mobile app (or via OTP sent by SMS, but this is being phased out, as it is insecure)
Likewise, in Germany we can have SEPA for most stuff.
And in Greece there is Viva.
Problem is getting something that actually works across all European countries.
While we may make most of our payments within EU, basically everyone still occasionally pays for something outside of EU, either online or when they travel. This means if the new thing only works in EU, every European will still need and have a MasterCard/Visa even if they use it less often than before.
This is still a massive amount of leverage - MC/Visa still have the ability to block payments made from EU citizens/companies to outside.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface
It sounds a lot like what they're discussing.
I would also hope so, that is the entire point. The reason they are scrambling right now is because Starlink just shut off all of Russia. Because Starlink was so cheap and easy (and stable for the last 4 years of the war), a lot of people in Russia stopped using any other form of internet access. And while all of Europe is happy to see Russia go away, they are concerned that the same can be done to them at a whim by any number of American companies. So they are trying to quickly create alternatives to anything American including software providers like Microsoft 360.
As for credit cards, it is not as if there is something intrinsically American in credit card processing. They can just as easily create a new system that uses the same protocols as Visa and Mastercard.
Having your entire economy dependent on a company you don't control in a country you don't control was considered acceptable for as long as a concept of "allies" existed. That is not the world we are living in right now.
What you're saying is just plain false. No one has ever used Starlink in Russia. It doesn't even work here. It never did. Russian troops were using Starlink on Ukrainian territory, that's what was shut off.
They're the same bright minds that ensured no alternatives could naturally come out of the European market trough relentless bureaucratic central planning. I have zero hopes of a good outcome
What are you smoking ..err.. any source to your claim ? (Which is between bizarre and just plain wrong).
What are you talking about? Starlink never worked in russia. It worked in Ukraine, and it was shutdown in Ukraine by using a white list for which any Ukrainian can easily apply.
The goal was to shutdown Starlink usage by russian drones in Ukraine and by anyone on the occupied Ukrainian territories.
Pasting this ddg-ai thing but I think its called UPI 123PAY
UPI 123PAY allows users to make digital payments using feature phones without needing a smartphone or internet connection. Users can set up a UPI ID by dialing *99# and can make payments through methods like IVR calls, missed calls, or sound-based technology.
By the way, since you wondered, it seems to be
> built around the digital wallet Wero
and wikipedia says its a mobile payments method. I hope not. I hope it's rather an interface/spec.
(On a side note, I also hope individual countries of EU ensure that those spec leaves an ability for them to continue internally or even externally if rest of the EU decide to cut someone off or so.)
Even if it does, Google won't be taking a cut from it.
Also, it's then much easier to provide a mobile web version, or something else.
My country's internal system also sells a bracelet for contactless payments, and there are obviously payment cards.
Once there's a mandatory standard, it's much more likely competition will show up. EU wide SWIFT, direct debits, instant transfers, all show this.
Cards will have a slow demise over the next 10 years but it's coming whether we like it or not.
But 99.99% of the time won't be the implementation of such interfaces, but monitoring and security.
Sorry: This is Spain (to clarify).
Physical cards ftw!
Btw i love simply using cash in South America when getting a taxi, no stupid "apps", no tech nonsense. Just wait at a proper spot and hail.
I suspect simply stating that it must be a supported standard will do most of the work, much like standardising phone chargers.
No, these companies keep themselves in power not because they've solved such a difficult problem that nobody else can, but because they have a moat which they protect.
Time to do away with these foreign entities.
- For many consumers there isn't sufficient money in the account to settle all the one-time and ongoing transactions they are liable for -- credit cards are giving you a revolving loan, there's risk it will not be repaid, and that risk ends up reflected in processing fees
- For many _businesses_ managing cash flow is existential -- as merchants they want to be paid as quickly as possible, but as B2B customers they want to have 30-60 days to sell the input goods they've purchased so they can pay for them upstream. There is a premium for that flexibility that gets reflected in processing fees.
- For both consumers and merchants, fraud risk is real and while it's the most solvable part of all this it's a real (and costly!) factor today. That risk for fraud gets moved upstream to the networks/acquirers/processors/issuers and that premium shows up in (you guessed it) processing fees.
If you want to switch the world to a debit-based system where economic transactions are limited by cash on hand, I'd argue that's a poorer and less dynamic world than the one we're operating in today.
Payment networks don’t provide credit or any kind of liquidity whatsoever, that entirely provided by the various financial entities that communicate via the payment network. The reason Visa and Mastercard haven’t been easily replaced is simple network effects, nobody wants to integrate with a payment network where there’s nobody to transact with.
This is a uniquely American viewpoint. In most of Europe you don't buy anything on credit ever.
I'm confused - is it not the issuing bank that gives you the loan, and the credit card company just provides the infrastructure?
Btw. having an overdraft limit of a few hundred Euros is quite typical for those liquidity issues. You don't need a credit card for that.
Neither Visa nor MasterCard are loaning customers their money. It's the European banks that hold the bulk of the risk for European credit card transactions.
This is really much less of a thing in Europe, or at the very least in Germany and Spain. Mostly it's the overdraft from banks that you can use as what you call a revolving loan. Most of the visa and mastercards I've had in my life simply debit from my main account.
Disagree. Credit has its uses, but debit is superior for the vast majority consumer transactions: lower fees, lower risk, instant settlement, easy P2P transfers, and broader accessibility. That we've become used to credit card payment system in the West is largely a historical aberration that needs correcting.
Also, I'm a bit biased since I live in China, but WeChat Pay and Alipay are so far superior to the credit card system that I can hardly find a single redeeming quality in the latter. China was lucky in that it leapfrogged the traditional credit card system since it didn't have that historical baggage.
Some of the services include: - Consumer Credit - Fraud protection - Payment network - Discount service (rewards, etc) - Concierge services - Rental/Ticketing services - etc
No one is denying the utility of what they have created. The problem is they’ve built monopolistic walled gardens where these are all bundled together which raises overall costs while also prevents competition.
These services can easily be unbundled (for example in India the payment network is open and cost free, so anyone can provide those other services on top of the payment network).
What has made this far more urgent, however, is that these companies are located in the U.S. which has recently leveraged the power these networks have to attack EU citizens for frivolous reasons.
So even if the MC/Visa business model was perfect, it would be foolish for even American allies to rely on them given the actions of the current administration.
This is not meant as a personal attack, or meant to be defamatory. I am detecting a familiar pattern, that is entrenched culturally.
Further, I identify this cultural trait as one of the obstacles or reason for many European problems.
It’s an opinion I have.
I lost 3 credit cards INSIDE an airplane (hello AirAsia!). I only realized it when I turned on my phone while queuing at immigration and was bombarded with dozens of "Successful transaction" messages. That's ~30min from stepping off the airplane. When I checked my statements, I saw dozens of physical transactions (swipes/taps) with different merchants in different cities from the airport.
All 3 cards have different PINs. All require a PIN for transactions above ~USD200. Yet the banks rejected my disputes because "it's a physical transaction, so you must be the one doing it." Apparently, they all think I could fly to different cities, buy different items, and fly back to wait in immigration, all in 30 minutes.
Err, no - for _all_ businesses managing cash flow is the _only_ NR 1 crucial thing, because if they dont, they will disappear by tomorrow :)
Their risk is covered multiple ways (as reflected in their profits). You pay an annual fee to have a card. You pay per transaction, you pay for paywave, you pay 21% in interest.
They cover their risk by hitting every possible angle.
I think there's plenty of money to back all the activity.
Especially if there are central banks willing to back them
In the EU, debit cards are pretty common, and largely its a network effect. You need to get terminals that are supported by your payment provider.
A lot of merchant terminals are provided by banks, and frankly they are itching to get a sweet sweet cut of each transaction. Not only the information, but the cut of each transaction. Something like 0.2-1.5% of each transaction. (I'm sure mastercard and visa give them a cut)
For Credit cards, the banks/operator already handle most of the risk, and then pay visa a percentage for the privilege of charging usury like rates
Also bank transfers are easy, instant and free.
> For many _businesses_ managing cash flow is existential -- as merchants they want to be paid as quickly as possible, but as B2B customers they want to have 30-60 days to sell the input goods they've purchased so they can pay for them upstream. There is a premium for that flexibility that gets reflected in processing fees.
Yes those businesses use a bank loan for this, no need for a credit card again.
> If you want to switch the world to a debit-based system where economic transactions are limited by cash on hand, I'd argue that's a poorer and less dynamic world than the one we're operating in today.
Thinking that the world doesn't have credit just because they use debit cards is one of the most idiotic things I've read today
And who wrote those? Aren't they just another part of the moat?
> It's actually quite fascinating how it was started.
Visa was founded in 1958 by Bank of America (BofA) as the BankAmericard credit card program.[1] In response to competitor Master Charge (now Mastercard), BofA began to license the BankAmericard program to other financial institutions in 1966.[8] By 1970, BofA gave up direct control of the BankAmericard program, forming a cooperative with the other various BankAmericard issuer banks to take over its management. It was then renamed Visa in 1976.
The answer is: "Banks."
It’s a captive market, which means Visa & MC really don’t have a ton of incentive to compete. How do you get new payment networks to integrate? Banks typically only offer a single network on their cards, and businesses use whatever their PoS systems accept. For a new network to compete, it’d need to be available everywhere.
It’s the textbook definition of core infrastructure for society and frankly should be operated like a utility. It’s not like Visa & MC are innovating - just look at the lethargic rollout of contactless in the US until COVID forced everyone’s hands.
The sole purpose of visa & MC is to grow profit each year. That’s it. I’m not a fan of that being in the middle of practically all consumer spending
I don't know that the problem is sophisticated, but it's certainly complex [1]. It's a bit of both in terms of complexity and defending a moat, which all businesses do, including, and especially European ones.
And companies like Visa, Mastercard, American Express, &c. arose initially from solving a real need. Before these companies came into existence when you traveled you'd have to take cash, or traveler's checks or some other nonsense. Today you can, at least as an American, just walk in to the subway in just about any country and tap to pay. Need a coffee at Mt. Fuji? Easy. Buying a bottle of Calvados in some remote area? Yea just tap to pay with your Mastercard.
> Time to do away with these foreign entities.
You'll never do that. Why? Because at a minimum you want American tourist dollars and Europe isn't going to start issuing European credit cards to Americans or other citizens around the world.
[1] Why is it complex? Well you have to deal with American and European financial regulations, KYC, &c. - you have to vet merchants, you have to run the infrastructure to process transactions, refunds, direct payments from bank accounts to pay for cards, and all of those things. Those are real, genuine business activities that are non-negotiable and while they may seem simple, in practice they are not at all simple.
It could be handled similarly to how tourists in Brazil can now use Brazil's Pix payment system.
One way Brazil handles it is with 3rd party digital wallets that tourists can install on their phones such as Wallbit [1]. Another way is with 3rd party services that let you pay from your own digital wallet or bank app and the service makes the Pix payment [2].
[1] https://www.wallbit.io/en/blog/brazilian-pix-and-a-payment-a...
[2] https://www.pagbrasil.com/lp/pix-for-international-travelers...
Hard disagree. Until Covid, many small shops didn't take cards in Europe. Taxis, restaurants, market stalls, even trains were often cash only not that long ago. I in the UK ran accounts in companies that had people travel extensively in Europe. We used to issue travellers with EUR200 for the things that cards couldn't buy. Most shops didn't take Amex due to fees. Americans will either have to bring a compliant card or change some cash at the airport.
I also think you have misjudged the mood. I guarantee there are a large number of people in rural Europe that would be very happy never to meet another American tourist, even if it costs them. Americans can look forward to worse service everywhere. I wouldn't be suprised if some people in rural France refused to let you have the Calvados at all.
Those are partially or completely taken over not by the card network but by the bank that is issuing you the card, so a change in the underlying technology will be transparent.
The reality is more complicated.
I have had Visa or Mastercard being refused in other countries by some retail outlets / institutions.
In fact I never travel with only one card from a single bank because I always want to have a backup. And it is not really Visa vs Mastercard because I have had occurences of having 2 Visas, one of which would work and another would not on a specific shop for no obvious nor documented reason.
Is that really true? I remember wanting to buy a train ticket at Charles De Gaulle airport, and the machine only took French credit cards. That was around 2010, so I don't know if something changed.
Had to use debit.
And people do underestimate the complexity of it
It wouldn't be hacker news without a comment like this. I haven't personally worked in finance, but I've had a lot of friends do it.
It _absolutely_ is complicated. It's not too complicated for a nation or the EU to do it in house, but no, there's a bit more there than "Claude make me a ledger"
Now most merchants have to work with two companies, visa and mastercard. Want to accept russian MIR cards? Well, in some countries you're not allowed to, and in some, you must, since visa and mastercard don't work there. Now if you add a european company to the mix... whill their cards get accepted in south africa? What about in eg turkey? China? Will whatever indian alternative is get accepted in france?
Currently, with a visa and mastercard, except for maybe russia and iran, you're pretty sure it'll get accepted at least somewhere in any urban area you visit, so you won't be hungry and have somewhere to sleep. If my bank replaces my mastercard with the EU alternative, I won't be that confident about that for quite a few years.
On the other hand, cash is still the king of everything everywhere... somehow some politicians are trying to get rid of that for some reason.
Thankfully, this use case has been solved by Russians themselves.
Regulation changes "why bother" to "oh crap".
This is the central power lever of the EU and one that is frequently underestimated.
European power projection doesn't work through tanks and aircraft carriers. It works with regulations, trade deals and economic incentives. Remember how a few years ago everyone was scrambling to get GDPR-compliant? That wasn't some random event. That was the EU projecting power.
Why do iPhones have USB-C now? European soft power.
Why are things like Champagne and Prosciutto di Parma protected brands that can only be sold if they're from the actual region? And I mean not just in Europe itself, but everywhere it has deals? Canada, Japan, India, China, Mercosur, etc etc? European soft power.
The EU is playing a different game from the other major players. Not one of brute force, but one of shifting the foundational rules of commerce in their favor. And they're very good at it.
1. Debit Mastercard/VISA. These are Debit Cards that use the Mastercard/VISA communication system to process transactions. While they are not "Credit" cards because you are using cash in an account that is your money, they rely upon the VISA/Mastercard system and merchants will be charged the Mastercard/VISA fee like a Credit Card.
2. Interac Debit Card. Interac was the first company to offer a debit card type system in Canada, and they are the traditional bank card. These cards use the Interac system (so does eTransfer) and Merchants are charged by Interac for using the system. Its typically less than Mastercard/VISA, which is why you see these "Debit Card only" signs.
3. Mastercard/VISA and Interac hybrid cards. These are newer and combine both Mastercard/VISA and Interac cards in one. The merchant can choose how they want to proceed.
Most of these "Debit" only signs are really saying "Interac only", but because for 30 years Interac was the only provider of Debit cards in Canada, it became the common vernacular to say "Debit" when you mean "Interac".
Visa and Mastercard exists because of US hegemony. The Europeans just put their heads in the sand for a long time and accepted the "superiority" of American payment solutions because it benefited their geopolitical play at the time.
Some sources (Old and New):
- https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/exclusive-visa-comp...
- https://jakartaglobe.id/business/indonesia-expands-qris-reac...
- https://www.china-briefing.com/news/wto-china-unionpay-rulin...
- https://valorinternational.globo.com/foreign-affairs/news/20...
I suspect there's quite a few other things you have to consider when you're managing trillions of dollars of transactions a year. Fraud, settlement times, up times, security, customer service, debt collection, interest rate calculation, reach, KYC, record keeping, legal inquiries.
But I'm sure we're just a couple grok comments away from a competitor
Hence why crypto hasn't taken off with merchants. Because who's going to pay for merchants to change their point-of-sale systems to accept a new payment method.
Just dealing with fraud is a major problem in itself.
Roughly nobody argues that part is difficult.
> It's not complicated.
It's very complicated, for the reasons that all complex real world systems are. It's an absolute mess.
> Time to do away with these foreign entities.
I don't really mind the "foreign" part, but it's fairly wild that essential financial infrastructure is privatized, so let's!
Any cross border payment solution, even within Europe, that lacks strong fraud protection is dead on arrival.
But I suspect the fraud problem will be ignored until it cannot be ignored anymore. And then we will go back to square one and try everything again.
Convincing your neighbors to build a refugee shelter in your neighborhood is difficult, and it's not like we have a shortage of house-building knowledge.
It’s about the cost of another employee in salary per year for restaurants.
While many other countries employ pay by QR code which is free.
In which countries is this service free? Alipay and Wechat are probably the biggest actors in this space both take a cut.
Knowing the card will always work 24/7/365 with such a high degree of assurance is a non-zero factor in how well a consumer economy performs.
Honestly its a few things.
No, the technical and financial implementation is quite complicated. Its not just a balance in a database.
Yes, they do maintain control through a vertically integrated business structure. But its very easy to justify due to risk management.
>No, these companies keep themselves in power not because they've solved such a difficult problem that nobody else can, but because they have a moat which they protect.
The moat is the difficulty. And they do protect it.
Theres a common type of customer in IT who thinks they can do everything themselves and the "finding out" phase of their shenanigans is often extremely costly, not just for themselves but for their customers.
The chief product of a good supplier is not just software or technical services, its the regimented and disciplined implementation of those services.
Some people will pay more for an IT provider who permits less because they lack the internal organizational discipline to do these things correctly for themselves.
As far as various governments are concerned, the payment card industry is largely self regulating. And that's because the apex card providers provide the balance of enforcement downstream to all the nitwits who would otherwise have to be stung by hundreds of security lapses before they would otherwise respond. The PCI SSC has created an environment where data security is more restrictive than most polity's would require, and its standards are applied worldwide. Often people get liability exemptions for meeting this standard, rather than the standard itself being enforced by legislation or regulation.
Governments honestly love this shit. Its like catnip.
And if you had 1 tiny look behind the curtains of a merchant credit card processor, you would see that they would abandon this level of compliance at the drop of a hat were they permitted. The glue that holds the whole thing together is the restricted access to global Visa and Mastercard payment processing.
If you think all this is trivial, demonstrate how trivial it is, and spin up your own cards, card payment platform, various interconnects and clearing houses. I think you would much more quickly assemble a working computer out of a kids sandpit. Shit I remember a bunch of crypto projects sought to replace Visa and Mastercard, the best we got was Crypto branded Visas and Mastercards.
We've already got a strong payment processing brand with Interac, it's used daily for millions of debit transactions, and supports all the features you'd expect (in Canada) from a payment card (tap, chip&pin). There's also the MasterCard Debit and Visa Debit branding which seem to bridge debit transactions to the MasterCard and Visa networks. And there's already Interac-capable terminals basically everywhere that Visa and MC are accepted.
My thought is that Interac should launch a credit card brand called "Interac Credit". The actual credit would be via the banks, just like it is with Visa and MC. Interac already has the relationships with merchants and banks to make this happen, and it has the mindshare with consumers to make it successful.
The banks have consistently refused to do anything, because they don't want any change that threatens their oligopoly. Canadian bank services are more or less the same as they were a decade ago.
The current government will have to show that it can resist rich people lobbying in this regard, before any real change can happen.
Canada could get the best of all worlds. Let Visa and Mastercard compete with Alipay and whatever the EU comes up with in the 2030s.
Also Interac does not do online transactions outside of some very specific merchants that take Apple/Google Pay transactions. This is how Interac reduces fraud risk, which is why interchange rates for Interac are so low.
A world with a patchwork of payments processing options will look different for travel and business, in some ways worse, but such is life in a "multipolar world" which the Americans elected their leadership to conjure up.
False? Co-badged cards are used in Germany, were used in NL, are used in NZ/AUS, many more examples than just "Asia".
We can and should make this practice illegal, along with several other anticompetitive policies in this space. Oh no they might hit us with tariffs in response?
<< Interac e-Transfer is a fast, secure and convenient way to send money to anyone in Canada using online banking. The participating bank or credit union transfers the funds using established and secure banking procedures. Transfers are almost instant, but can take up to 30 minutes depending on your bank or credit union. >>
Visa: 1.3% to 2.3% Mastercard: 1.5% to 2.6% Mastercard: 2.3% to 3.5%
Nothing precise as it depends on whether that's debit vs credit cards, and the type of card. Also volume related and what the bank may subsidize, or take on top.
A % of that also goes to the issuing bank*, not to MC/Visa, so I suspect the mentioned 0.2% is talking about what MC/Visa has as their cut.
*: That's also how banks can profitably offer things like cashback.
Visa's processes ~$14T in transactions. At 0.2% thats roughly ~$28B in revenue (VISA posted ~$40B in revenue in 2025) versus 2% is $280B in revenue.
EDIT: The 2~3% you're talking is the payment processor fees which get divvy'd out to acquiring processors, acquiring banks, gateways, merchant processing, etc. etc.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-...
> Specifically, the regulation:
> caps interchange fees at 0.2% of the transaction value for consumer debit cards and at 0.3% for consumer credit cards;
There was a recent case of one Serbian company being sanctioned by the USA, and Visa and Master refused to process payments. No big deal, since even a small country like Serbia has its payment system called Dina that kept the company afloat.
There's not a single technical reason for bigger and richer countries to develop their own card payment system. It's not rocket science. The only reason they didn't is their regulators wanted a dependency on the USA payment processors.
I only took a credit card for a bit when I went traveling, then canceled it.
Wero is like a monolith, while EMPSA is more like mobile phone roaming. If I would bet, I would bet on EMPSA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Mobile_Payment_System...
Polish BLIK, which is not even mentioned in the article and which has joined the EuroPA Alliance, processed €83 billion in 2024, with a 30% y/y increase in H1 2025. I understand that BLIK is much older, but it invested significant effort and money in marketing and promotions while delivering a good user experience. BLIK is now trying to expand to Romania and Slovakia, yet Wero is getting all the hype on Hacker News. Maybe this is a case of East, South, and West Europe being treated differently. Is the only “European” solution one that comes from Western Europe?
That have at least been my experience, trying to integrate Vipps in Scandinavia.
Never heard about this before, and I'm a German.
But maybe I misunderstood and other places are actually replacing tech.
Point being that with a cheap alternative, it's actually much more convenient now to use a Visa or Mastercard especially with tap to pay because with competition being so high, the diversity means people allow all payments.
My experience is opposite, Now with UPI which 99% of people have access to there is no incentive for people to accept Credit Cards.
If in EU a local payment system captures the cash market, then the habit of using digital payments will actually also help Visa and Mastercard make more sale.
I currently don't have a credit card, but when I do, I find paying by a Visa/MasterCard much more preferable than UPI, simply because it's easier by tapping.
(And then as pointed out, anyone smaller straight up doesn’t support anything outside of UPI.)
https://x.com/moo9000/status/2006304163404128289
The difference this time is that Digital Euro is forced by ECB and control (and deposits) are taken away from banks.
> The core problem has always been fragmentation. Each EU country developed its own domestic payment solution — Bizum in Spain, iDEAL in the Netherlands, Payconiq in Belgium, Girocard in Germany — but none could work across borders. A Belgian consumer buying from a Dutch retailer still needed Visa or Mastercard. National pride and competing banking interests repeatedly sabotaged attempts at unification.
> The network effect compounds the challenge. Merchants accept Visa and Mastercard because consumers carry them. Consumers carry them because merchants accept them. Breaking that loop requires either regulatory force or a critical mass of users large enough to make merchants care — which is precisely what the EuroPA deal attempts to deliver by connecting existing national user bases rather than building from scratch.
It's now been about a month since a White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor openly talked about/advocated for taking Greenland by force. POTUS was vague for a while.
Northern European nations sent like a hundred military officers to Greenland. POTUS then threatened those nations with, wait for it, tariffs.
Then the markets crashed and Rutte/Nato provided a face-saving de-escalation path.
Their site claims that it can only be used on iOS or Android: https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599074240...
Also:
> It is not possible to use Wero via a web browser or on a computer.
This seems an even worse situation than carrying around a Maestro (mastercard) with me.
In what way specifically? Android and iOS are just the OS the banking apps that implement Wero happen to run on. There is nothing stopping them from releasing a Linux app. Or a web app.
“Breakup” seems a bit exaggerated considering the % of payment volume which might switch to the new system.
Brazil introduced Pix in 2019, it's now the most used payment method for all transactions nationwide, ahead of both cards & cash.
India introduced UPI in 2016, it now handles >80% of digital payments there, and handles more transactions a day than Visa does worldwide.
It's totally plausible to me that a similar replacement could overtake cards completely within a decade. The lack of cross-border support means "Pay with Bizum" is a niche feature that's only useful in Spain, but if "Pay with Wero" becomes an instant & ~free payment method that works for hundreds of millions of users then it's a very different ballgame.
Is that by volume of transactions or total amount, or both?
Cash transactions can of course only be estimated for this statement.
On the other hand, if you step back a little bit, Russia is currently stuck in a Sovjet civil war, so I don’t think the Kremlin way is that great.
But yeah, it is amazing that in 2022 nobody here even noticed that MC/Visa left. Even MC/Visa cards haven't stopped working and are working to this day (banks made a rule that cards that expire after 2022 continue to work for several more years so that everybody has time to switch to MIR).
It's not seamless if it includes a war, global isolation, exodus of all business and disconnection of the banks. This means they were left with no alternative, in which case, sure, it's 'seamless' to use the only alternative method.
Europe will have a lot of friction with consumer habits and Visa will always be relevant for buying things from outside EU. These are all competing entities which hate anything that makes them seamlessly lose their business.
It's about card payment and even if things ending up in your network they first going through visa.
And it's about online payment (PayPal).
no it isn't
for bank to bank payment your statement might be true
but this isn't true for EC card payment and most online payment
_all_ EC cards either use the Visa Payment network and secure modules or the Mastercard one (but by now it's mostly Visa in most places). Sure they have your banks local branding but it's Visa anyway.
This also applies to payment terminal, most (not all) go through the Visa payment network to process payments.
And even in the same country a lot of online payment either goes through credit cards (again mostly Visa in EU) or PayPal. This isn't technically needed at all but due to fragmentation whatever alternative you want to use is just sometimes available.
Which is where Wero comes in:
- try to reduce fragmentation by making it a cooperation across many banks (of which most had their own failed PayPal alternative)
- onboard people on (local) online banking and private Phone2Phone payment (e.g. bill sharing)
- then (now) expand to pushing some payment terminal providers to support it with Phone based payment. There are multiple initiatives for it.
The later part is possible due to 3 reasons:
- payment apps on phone bypassing secure module monopoly nonsense related to EC/Credit cards and visa
- a lot of the in-person checkout systems of small businesses are now a tablet + separate cash register + EC terminal. This means that even if the EC terminal doesn't support Wero the payment system can still do so through their tablet.
- Also I think some of the wider used payment terminal in large EU specific chains can get Wero support with a software update.
Still it's by far not a perfect situation:
- still too much fragmentation/to little adoption by banks
- "old" payment terminals and (physical) checkout systems which are bound to Visa and can't easily be updated
So there most likely won't be a hard break anytime soon, and your EC card will likely continue using Visa secure module and network for a very very long time.
But having a technical working alternative which can slowly start eating market share is already a huge step forward.
Is it really just PayPal left offering a sane online payment service?
---
From https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599074240...:
> It is not possible to use Wero via a web browser or on a computer.
With credit cards, they actually claw that money back from the merchant, and then if the merchant can't pay they just eat it themselves.
So the merchant has to work in fraud rates into their pricing, and the credit card company has to work in fraud rates that the merchant can't cover into their rates.
It always seemed toxic it to me that the merchants are the one's responsible, despite the fact that they easily have the least power to do anything about it. But the ease of payment processing, and the number of people who just won't buy it if they can't use a card, outweighs dealing with fraud I guess.
It would be an economic boon to the bloc if they assumed more of the risk.
I'm curious how India's UPI handles fraud/refunds, as the system seems to have garnered near-universal praise.
Like, if someone stole a credit card and use it to buy stuff ?
Non-Euro countries won't be guaranteed to have it until July 2027.
SEPA instant transfers aren't guaranteed instant as they might still be withheld for fraud checks.
But now i think of it… how does Visa and MC do it? Cuz i dont have a username or phone nber with them (i know they have my number). But i havent switched my number, so maybe if i did, i would have an issue?
I can send money ONLY to my contacts. It doesn’t allow to type in phone number, one needs to create a contact.
I feel like Europe is just doomed. The stupidity is endless here.
It didn’t work for the amount we needed (over 15k).
Biggest banks here refused to support Apple Pay and worked hard on legislations to open NFC access. Now we can pay with no fees to Visa/Mastercard or Apple even from our phones.
Instead, we are getting a digital euro, a fully dystopian abomination.
But I'm sure there are plenty of villains and idiots that will try (and succeed) in diluting those principles and will get some dystopian (trace everything) version of that.
Even Polish banks discourage using debit cards directly and just switch to Blik.
Lost card? There's no card, so doesn't apply. ATM skimmers? Nope, I think all ATM support Blik, so can't sniff anything. Want to send money to a friend? Instant mobile-friendly transfer. It's even possible that the family can pull the cash out from the ATM from your account when you're in a different city if you'll give out the code.
Just the transaction processing fees going to VISA and Mastercard now would probably pay that back within a few years. Also, we're talking about all or almost-all European countries. So it doesn't sound like that much.
> Low interchange fees under EU regulation make profitability difficult.
Mandating that businesses which accept US credit cards must accept the European payment card would take care of that. Actually, maybe that's not necessary, it's probably enough to mandate that companies making card processing tech which supports US credit cards must also include support for this card; and businesses would just get it with their next system upgrade / terminal replacement or something.
> Consumer habits are deeply entrenched
I 'like' how people are described as "consumers", as though every payment is for consumption.
Anyway, habits are not that deeply entrenched. Didn't people adopt those country-level payment cards? Don't people occasionally change credit cards? It's not even a change of tech, it's just yet another card.
> and neither Visa nor Mastercard will sit idle while Europe tries to dismantle their most profitable market.
Now this may be a significant factor... they could influence politicians, tech solutions makers (with sweetheart deals if they don't support the new payment tech, or whatever), they can get the US government to make some kind of threat (we've already seen the threat to invade Greenland). So, yeah, there's that.
Item two is convenience. All these systems are "faster wire transfers". I don't really see the point of them when you can already do instant IBAN or even phone number based transfers.
What they do not have is a line of credit backing them. Got to make sure you have money in "the particular system your merchant accepts". Also at least in eastern europe credit cards come with the possibility to pay in a few installments with zero interest (paid for by the merchant of course, so not everyone does that). This is gone in the new system.
What they also do not have is the fraud protection of a credit card. You may be able to revert a transaction but the money is gone from your account and it will take a long time to see it back.
On the other hand it's harder to spend money you do not have so perhaps the EU is trying to make its citizens more financially responsible? :)
Card terminals here in Poland usually accept BLIK payments
It is also very popular payment method in e-commerce
In Czech Republic we have QR payments. They're ok, but could be more streamlined...
Last August US threatened tariffs on Brazil over their Pix system. One of the reasons given was that people using Pix instead of credit cards deprived Visa and Mastercard of fees.
Just a correction: the US imposed those tariffs. Threatened too, I guess, but the Orange Man did more than that.
It's not as much about replacing Visa/Mastercard, as it is about plastic card technology becoming obsolete, and the duopoly failing to react to the market because of corporate inertia. Had they created a modern online payment system, Wero would never take off.
Developing countries have mostly leapfrogged to total contactless payments.
In South Aast Asia, you typically scan a QR code and approve a payment from your own phone. Far less fraud as a result. Nobody is able to touch your card, you don't have one.
Europe likely identified they better make the jump.
There are benefits to non-QR based payment systems, such as not wanting to pull out your phone, open an app, scan a QR and approve to make a payment that takes me 2 seconds with regular contactless payments.
Physical cards are also a nice fallback to have in cases of running out of battery, theft, etc.
We have progressively absorbed single function items into a mobile computer.
Watch, notepad, calendar, phone, flashlight, camera, dictionary, encyclopedia, etc.
The issue with declaring single function items as obsolete is that it removes redundancy and really sets us all up for an increasingly more critical single point of failure in our pocket.
Who returns your money to you if you purchased something on mail order with this, and it turned out to be fraud?
Debit or ATM cards are different. They pull money directly from your account and can exist independently of Visa and Mastercard. For example, some credit unions still issue ATM only debit cards that are not part of the Visa or Mastercard networks.
I've paid numerous time using the swiss counterpart, Twint, in small shops. For some like the farm I used to buy vegetables to it was their only supported payment besides cash because they deemed the card systems too expensive.
The same way chinese tourists can already pay with alipay in many retatail outlets in europe, you can already pay with such european systems on Aliexpress. More are probably comming.
Wero are not in the business of issuing cards, though obviously they could get into that business - just like UnionPay did in China. I suspect there would be a lot of inertia there, as card payment fees are capped in Europe anyway.
Granted, the FAQ entry is rather light in details:
https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/39413057671...
Neither are visa/MC for the most part. Mostly debit. ;) this isn’t really about the card anyway but the network behind it.
This is likely to be similar to the existing European payment systems just wider in scope. There are a bunch already it’s just fragmented and country specific. Sepa wero ideal girocard crates bancaires
When did banks actually make that switch?
It must be relatively recent, because I remember not that long ago my credit union ATM card was not part of Mastercard. Now I have a new one and it suddenly has a Mastercard logo.
even better, its not public.
As an european, I'm for all the european tech stack funding projects going on, but I'm also glad we move on these other issues without waiting forever.
One not-so-fun fact is that when the US sanctions anyone, their ability to transfer and use money via Visa etc. is taken away. In the modern world, being cut away from even using your debit card is a huge, massive hassle.
It is one of the many different ways being sanctioned makes life more difficult. I can't imagine the US being too keen on giving up those powers.
And it's not secure or anonymous at all. At some point you need to buy crypto or sell crypto, or buy some goods with crypto, and at that point you can be easily identified. Happened so many times.
Even here in Russia, under all US sanctions, only a few use crypto. It's so inconvenient that even under pressure of US sanctions it hadn't become more popular.
You'd add a lot of technical complexity, especially if you need this to be instant. You'd loose the ability to effectively fight fraud, and because of this get a huge target on your back attracting all sorts of unwanted behavior.
On the other hand, you'd gain... nothing? Especially since consumers cannot be expected to run their own blockchain stack, they'd need to fully trust their banks and intermediaries anyhow.
Money would go directly bank-to-bank, nothing in the middle.
If the government is going to act irrationally and (through visa/mc) prevent legitimate transactions then people will just deal with fraud.
Even if Europeans agree with the DLsite ban they see the writing on the wall for European eCommerce sites.
The article briefly touches this point but dismisses it saying wero and the digital euro complement each other, but doesn't go into detail on how. I see no point in a privately run digital currency when we can have a public one. I guess whichever has good privacy, reliability, ease of use and speed will win.
(but it probably won't ever happen, because banks are lobbying against it with FUD campaigns, they feel like it threatens their existence)
Wero is something completely different. It allows consumers to easily pay merchants, mostly online. The digital euro is not a payment network in the same sense as Visa, Mastercard, iDEAL and others.
Or, an easy way for vendors or car rental agencies to block a set amount when you rent a car.
However, all of these things can be built and I hope Wero gets the time to grow into a full alternative to US-based payment systems.
Not because I want them to fail, but because this market can use a bit of competition and new ideas.
Probably merchants like Netflix would also love recurring payment functionality. Let's just hope they'll make them cancelable this yime.
Earnest question: is the EU really Visa and Mastercard's most profitable market? I would have expected it to be the US, both by customer volume numbers and in terms of regulatory environment (i.e. the US allowing payment processors to take a larger cut).
Smartcards with PINs were ubiquitous much much sooner (it being a French idea did not help for US market penetration), which means today the magnetic stripe on our cards is little more than decoration. Seriously, I'm 29 and I've yet to see a single magstripe payment here (while it was daily when I went to the US).
Also, we pretty much only have debit cards (don't know why, but don't know why I would want a credit card). This is even less risk for both the network and the merchant and the bank, reducing issues for all links in the chain.
Or the fact that Europe has 100M extra people in it, and a lot of countries seldom use cash nowadays.
I disagree. In Portugal, MB Way arrived, allowing people to use their phone to send money to each other, or pay in terminals, and it was widely adopted. People want ease of use and low fees, not to keep their credit cards.
With this being said, the Digital Euro has more potential.
Living in the Netherlands iDeal is perfect for online shopping, but once the money is gone there is no way to get it back.
With Visa/Mastercard there is a level of protection available which leaves the door open to get your money back if you are being scammed.
I believe Wero is going to implement this as well, so time will tell but I think any move to break the duopoly of Visa/Mastercard is good for consumers.
In Asia you can pay with Alipay in most countries. In South America you can pay QR codes via Mercado Pago (for example).
Or at least make this new system interoperable with the more established players worldwide without the need for a Visa/Mastercard.
That's exactly the problem. Several actors have won the market of their country, but only of their country.
Will Trump be enough to make the europeans realize that they need to work together, and that an italian win is just as good as a german win?
For someone from france, sure.
For both italians and germans, it matters who wins (and i'm not making a pun here).
I agree with you
However that specific example somehow feels off and déjà vu
wow, so not even all of the European Union, not even all Eurozone countries, hmm
I get their SEPA system but do they really not have a functioning credit network between consumers and merchants?
The digital euro could be a good candidate here and it also aspires to have cash-like privacy features. It's also mentioned in the article as separate and hopefully non overlapping product.
I think it's absolutely amazing that "crypto" (from bitcoins to shitcoins) have turned out to be no more useful as a currency than chips from the local casino. This has damaged their ability to function as a simple currency that can be used to pay for goods and services. And they have damaged the reputation of the whole distributed ledger technology to the point where, in 2026, banks aren't even considering implementing a closed circuit inter-bank distributed ledger as a way to send euro from one bank account to another. If the digital currency in this closed system was actual euro, there would be no reason to speculate on its value and turn the whole thing into a circus.
I'm sure I'm missing something (a lot actually)
NASDAQ (NYC) currently runs on software/systems built and maintained by Stockholm-based developers. NASDAQ merged with Swedish OMX in 2008, founded as Optionsmäklarna OM AB in the 80s.
> Well, either the US or China.”
> The host’s response — “I didn’t realise this” — captured the broader European blind spot.
People have been firing warning shorts for years. It is not a blind spot. It is just being ignored.
Not part of US not part of EU either.
what a losing proposition.
if it can be a card network with fraud protections that visa offer -- this will easily overtake Visa, Mastercard
Brazil with Pix have already proved this.
Not necessarily
If we can have visa and MasterCard while not being part of the US, we can potentially take part in whatever the EU creates
We rode on USA infra for too long. Europe is full of "managers".
When China and Russia have their own pay systems, why not EU?
As long as all the other cards still get acceptance, this seems like a great system.
> The Wero app can be installed on any mobile device or tablet running iOS 16 or later, or Android version 9 or later. We recommend updating your device to the latest version of its operating system for maximum performance, convenience and security.
> It is not possible to use Wero via a web browser or on a computer.
Your comment is of course downvoted
1. You first need to install an app (because you want to use tap to pay)
2. Then you need to download another app to authenticate the first app
3. But to set up the 2nd app you need to wait for an actual physical mail which contains a code.
4. Then you set up the 2nd app, but then again it asks for you to do a KYC using your Id Card.
5. Now you need to download another app to do the KYC using your Id, but it asks for another code which you receive by physical mail when you got your Id years ago, but you have no idea where that mail or code is, now you have to request for another code and wait like 2 weeks till you get a physical mail with that code....
.... and the story goes on.
I guess France and Germany are siblings in kafkaesque administrative shenanigans.
Why a subset of the EU and of Europe?
The fact that EU sees dependence on American tech in the same way as Russian oil now is saddening and telling.
Americans and American companies had it really good - our tech extracted money from the world, and they were mostly willing to pay for it. And it was an incredible advantage to the US.
But now, it seems that we are happily throwing all that away, for what benefit I do not yet see. Regardless of whether this effort succeeds, why stoke this fire at all?
I would say I hope Americans realize what they’ve done by making their own companies enemies of the world at large, but I’m not holding my breath for any sort of self reflection.
all of this infrastructure Europe claims to want to build will take many many years to realize, particularly at the relaxed European pace. trump will be out of office by the time the EU has held it's fifteenth planning meeting to issue it's first strongly worded letter of intent.
America was called an "enemy of Europe" (before the Greenland stuff) even though it was more generous towards Ukraine than a bunch of European countries, and essentially every country outside of Europe. Polls showed that China has higher approval than the US in Europe, despite the fact that China actively supplies war material to Russia. Again, this was before the Greenland stuff (I'm against that obviously).
There's no point in trying to please these people. They regard us as a vassal state. They're not joking when they say they think of Americans as idiots. We should've withdrawn from NATO a long time ago. Hopefully Europe's corporate boycotts will help to pass Massie's withdrawal bill.
It will also be interesting to see drug prices in Europe rise after the Europeans spent years making fun of the US for high drug prices. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/tr...
The Europeans tend to reap what they sow in the US/Europe relationship.
Though at least in Germany we have "girocards/EC-cards" that are not owned by Visa/Mastercard. Some banks are phasing them out in favor of a Visa/Mastercard debit card.
So maybe this is just an attempt to make Wero a bit stronger in comparison to PayPal. AFAIK Wero does not replace a credit card.
23% of people in Poland, assembled luggage in case of war. Yet EU is still buying russian gas and oil.
and they don't have permissions to military to pass through in case of help from country to country
I hate having to use visa or mastercard when better options exist but the solution is to allow competitive solutions and make surcharge mandatory so customers bear the cost of their payment choices.
In the begining of this year, they basicly banned EU merchants from using confirmo (crypto payment gateway), when it was finally getting traction.
Will it be accepted in hotels abroad? Can i withdraw cash at ATM abroad? Can i add it as a card to my Google wallet?
Usually banks app are nightmare. Pins everywhere, extra passwords. MFA not with my dongle....
Sigh.
Seriously, I have had no issues with visa or mastercard. This euro-nationalism is odd to me.
Oh! That's exactly what we all needed - 16 banks suggest their own "system", even more crude and clumsy imitation of the surveillance standards of payment systems and marketplaces, which shielded banks from snitching clients' consumption patterns.
They don't need anything advanced like Apple Pay layered tokenizations that at least respects a little of privacy. Everything is linked to a single phone (the article states that the focus is on Bizum and those pathetic peer-to-peer payment systems). The banks are in good shape to capture data, the tax authorities have a clear picture of how to squeeze the plebs even more - nice.
How about stablecoins with native yield from ECB treasuries? It solves everything and costs nothing. But we see what happens in US - "treasuries spread is not for plebs", - banks say.
Now, what will happen in the UK.
I have a recent background as a member of the Senior Management of one of the largest banks in Europe (8 years stint).
I worked in IT - and build the only successful platform for financial services done in-house and to ever make it as a standard not because management tried to force people, no because it solved customer's problem (external and internal customers aka employees).
I don't buy any of these EU is going fully independently. EU's IT isn't capable of doing this. No way ever ever.
I will 100% of the time bet against it. I saw so many things, experienced so many things - and no way is there anyone out there in Europe who to this day simply can acknowledge and appreciate the marvelous work and evolution that for example Google took or any other startup to leading global business like Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and so on.
Even IBM's mainframe: if you do not understand the very problem they solve - don't talk about "independence from X".
There is no successful startup from Europe, that has any results like the mentioned. All have to do with IT, all went from idea to what they are now.
And Europe now wants to do what?
All my fellow European's here boasting around: I feel sorry for you. All the "Let's build our own Google" (Google search) folks that predated the other independence stories like this here simply disqualify themselves the moment the say out loud such sentences.
Read 5 books about Engineering at Google, read the HTML5 spec by searching for Ian Hickson, go to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA - and tell me that EU is going well in IT independence in taking a totally different approach, ignoring every and any circumstance and context the mentioned companies had, using design by committee, state dictated orders, establishing standards by enforcing them by law instead of evolution and being the best there is.
Good luck, we will see how it went.
And no, building something that looks somewhat okish from the outside, but is utterly crap inside - we talk about, excuse me my corporate language I was penetrated with, "best in class world leading number one" apps that leave any comparable solutions in the dust - just as Google, Apple, Microsoft etc. did.
If you cannot win in free markets - you declare victory by misusing regulation. That's cheap and well, socialism.
All of you will beg that all the systems and providers will still do business with you after years of trashing them.
Are Mastercard etc. awesome? Are they objectionable? Of course - but trashing them, boasting you will easily beat them while having the double standard on relying on them freely is disgusting.
All EU patriots: Throw away your iPhones, deinstall all the US apps - use at least existing Open Source alternatives. Cancel your Netflix, Microsoft Office subscription - do it.
Good luck anyway. After all, you are doing a live experiment on the head of the people forced to live with a minorities decision.
/s
Visa/Mastercard are the biggest evil. Why do you think Trump got pissed at Brazil having its own payment system without Visa/Mastercard network deleting billions in revenue from Visa/Mastercard
The problem major problem is already mentioned: Each EU country wanna have their own independent system. Nothing prevent the countries from doing that but it must talk within the same payment network so people in the Netherlands can buy from Italy using their own payment system.
Own payment system is different than payment network :)
Of course, what could go wrong!!
Unbelievable, a chance to make a whole new standard, new system, new everything, but yet we still have the need to tie it to ancient protocols, only to find later it’s broken by design and we start adding all sort of duct tape solutions to make it “secure”..
This is either a completely and entirely stupid move by some boomers living in the 80s, or maybe, it’s intentional to enforce something insecure like a phone number/GSM as a “national ID” to easily track citizens and force them to have a phone number linked to their real life, and I think it’s the second one, the same reason why many “secure” chatting apps still require a phone number.
It's also more convenient than giving out an opaque UUID to your friend to transfer you money or something similar.
The bigger problem I see with this is it being one more service locked exclusively to Android and iOS devices, but it's the same with most currently used banking apps anyways.
Not to mention that some of the alternatives are owned by a consortium of... European banks.
