Wero is such a valuable asset for Europe and couldn't have come at a better time.
It's built on the excellent SEPA system, which standardized bank transfers and "Lastschrift" in Europe. SEPA itself got a huge upgrade last year with mandatory instant transfers that cannot cost more than standard transfers between European checking accounts.
Both of those allowed Wero to happen as a final abstract top layer, meaning: the UX of sending money to an email address with the security and convenience of bank transfers. And everything is built collaboratively on top of European banking infrastructure.
No account necessary and no private american conglomerates can delete that account.
And before some says: "Well, now the government controls everything!": They already did, since... Ever. Now its one less entity with that access and one that can be (hopefully) controlled and changed by a majority.
Note that Wero is amongs others based on the Dutch iDEAL [1] system, which was introduced 21 years ago. Virtually every Dutch web shop supports iDEAL (and many only support iDEAL) as well as international payment services such as PayPal and Stripe. As a result, the vast majority of transactions of Dutch webshops go through iDEAL. It is really a super-nice frictionless system.
iDEAL also supports P2P payments through Tikkie (ABN AMRO) or the payment request option of other banks. You basically show a QR code or send a link and the person paying goes through the iDEAL flow to transfer the money. Tikkie (and the other bank's similar and compatible systems) have been one of the primary methods for P2P transfers for many years now.
I am really happy that we are getting the same system across multiple countries now. Contactless payments through Wero are also planned, so that we can finally become independent of Google/Apple Pay for contactless payments using a phone.
[1] EPI purchased the Dutch iDEAL and Belgian Payconiq and mentioned on multiple occasions that Wero is based on the foundations of iDEAL. They kept iDEAL running as a separate system in order not to disturb it during the upbringing of Wero, but iDeal is going to migrated to Wero the coming period.
Actually, look closer when you pay using Ideal (as we all do). You will notice that usually there are several payment methods, and these almost always include credit cards.
The reason for this is not because the Dutch like to pay using credit cards (most Dutch never use one), but because of a little known law regarding online stores. It is, in fact, not allowed to only offer payment options that require the customer to pay the full amount upfront. And Ideal (and Wero) do just that: you order a T-shirt for €20, you pay €20 upfront, the shirt gets shipped, and you receive it.
> U mag maximaal 50% vooruitbetaling vragen voor producten die u nog moet leveren.
> Dit betekent dat u standaard mag aanbieden om het hele bedrag te betalen. Maar u geeft klanten ook de mogelijkheid om minimaal 50% pas na levering te betalen.
There are almost no online stores which offer this of course. It's just not part of this commercial model. Not for a T-shirt (or whatever).
So what is the trick the government itself even recommends?
Something about the way credit card payments reserve payments initially and the way credit cards offer consumer protection services makes this a payment option which, apparently, fulfils this 50% after delivery rule…
To be honest I like the idea of forcing merchants to accept credit cards in addition to this.
Regardless of how much I like the idea of a payments layer without Visa/Mastercard fees, I think the rich engineers of hackernews and 10,000 overpaid consultants who worked on this massively underestimate how valuable an interest-free 30 day bridge loan is to average people (and businesses) on monthly payroll.
Combine this with the consumer protections and threat of a dispute (which almost always sides with the buyer) and it generally tilts power to the consumer in most credit card transactions, if the consumer has autopay setup (huge caveat of course).
This new layer is totally neutral, and removes the detriment to the merchant in terms of fees/risk, but not sure it’s actually as good for the market as claimed here. For me it’s a net loss, and harming consumers ultimately harms the merchant in terms of willingness to buy things. If it becomes trendy for merchants to start refusing credit cards to use this instead, I will be WAY less likely to take a risk on a purchase I’m not 100% confident about.
Im not willing to try new products from most startups for example if I can’t buy on a credit card.
This applies more to the USA than to Europe, where "credit cards" are in fact mostly debit cards (cursory research says 71% vs 26% in America), and ordinary people tend not to be up to their necks in consumer debt. Anecdotally, I've never used an actual credit card in my life.
Not really. They just changed the logo to make people get used to the name. The next phase where they start migrating the iDEAL infra into Wero starts in October:
Wero’s goal is to become a European payment system. Like an iDEAL across EU countries. That requires buy-in from major EU banks, some of which are shareholders of EPI, the company behind Wero.
It’s also a response to the ECB’s digital Euro, a way that banks show the central bank “hey, we the banks are actually capable of creating a good EU-level payment system”.
It's primarily an online payment system, not a money transfer system. It has worked since forever (20+ years, it's a rebranded Dutch system) from web browser. Still does.
The commenter is stating that as a fact, which is spreading information that's not true to others reading that.
Perfect is the enemy of good as always. Having a system that is currently available on the two biggest mobile platforms for the launch (Covering probably 99.9% of consumers) is already much better than piping every single transaction through two US mega corps.
> Good morning, it's not "our" fault. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about it—Wero is a service offered by EPI, and they've decided to take a "mobile-first" approach for now. Warm regards from Bochum!
> What about smartphones that run on free and open-source software instead of the commercial operating systems used by the iPhone or Google?
> Tanja Müller-Ziegler: This market is still very much a niche one. There are still too few providers, which is why it’s hardly worth offering banking apps for these devices.
> Perfect is the enemy of good as always.
I'm no expert on iDEAL, but being 20 years old, it's older than Android and iOS and presumably supported web based payments from the very beginning. I really don't understand why nowadays people seem to think that app exclusivity is somehow a natural starting point. It's a relatively recent invention.
> they've decided to take a "mobile-first" approach for now
That's hardly a confirmation that it will never be possible ("for now"). It seems like a fair tradeoff for a launch when almost everyone has a smartphone and that's already enforced like that for many parts of life (I'm not saying it's great, but it's a valid tradeoff when alternative options exist) like banking or public transport where the happy path often is a phone app.
The European Payments Initiative (EPI) acquired the Dutch payment system iDEAL with the aim of making it the standard payment solution across all European countries. [...] The first step is to make iDEAL the standard in France and Germany because the countries don’t yet have a standard payment system for e-commerce, according to AD. Customers in the Netherlands will notice little of this.
> No account necessary and no private american conglomerates can delete that account.
Officially you need a Google or Apple account to download a wero capable app from their stores, and Google and Apple can always delete all wero capable apps from their stores like for example with Russian sanctioned banks.
Some banking apps work on non - google play controlled android smartphones, but always only accidentally. Some banks like for example Consorbank already crack down on "sideloading" their app at all: https://www.reddit.com/r/Consorsbank/comments/1p909w1/commen...
If Wero is going to be similar to iDEAL, which it is based on, the payment flow will be through your bank's app. Heck, even the Wero app description says so:
The Wero app is available only for account holders from the German bank Postbank and the French bank La Banque Postale.
Are you a customer of another Wero-enabled bank? If so, you can easily use Wero within your banking app.
I have seen quite some people downloading their banking apps through the Aurora store (admittedly, it's a frontend for the Play Store, but you don't need an account or the app). Or you can use something like APKMirror and verify that they have the correct signing keys.
Of course, if they need Play Services or Play Integrity basic, then you need sandboxed Google Play or microG. If your bank does remote attestation through Play Integrity, then it is game over, but it is worth contacting your bank. E.g. some banks have added the GrapheneOS signing keys and added support for AOSP remote attestation.
Which is complete bullshit with the Euro having been specifically invented to be used across the EU.
I had a similar moment of stupidifiedment trying to park in Germany with a phone set to Dutch region. Euro in cash works everywhere Euros are accepted but apps on the freaking Internet? Nah, gotta restrict that to the publisher country only.
Switzerland is not part of the EU nor the Eurozone though. It's still a shortsighted stance of Postbank not to open the app to at least the DACH region, but that specific argument carries little weight.
I can pay with iDEAL without interacting with a smartphone, using only my laptop and a physical 2FA device provided by my bank. Do you know if this will be possible with Wero?
Require payment services providers to ensure that all users can benefit from methods to perform SCA which are adapted to their needs and situations and, in particular, that those methods do not depend on one single technology, device or mechanism, for instance on the possession of a smartphone.
It's up to your bank actually. Banks (generally) don't want to pay for your hardware key so you need to do a special dance to trigger their compliance bound neural pathways to send you one.
But then the true bliss will arrive the next year with eidas 3.0 or whatever it is called
I have German bank accounts at two different banks and can send SEPA SCT instant transactions via webinterface and physical tan generator with both of them. Wero however is restricted to mobile apps regardless of what your tan generator is and in fact from what I heard, banks generally force you to switch to mobile app tan generators when opting into Wero.
The GLS bank implies it's not up to them. Generally I feel like implementation details are intentionally not made public. For example so far there is no definitive statement on the public internet I could find about whether iDEAL web based payments will still be available after iDEAL will actually switch to Wero. Statements like "For consumers, the online payment experience will remain largely unchanged, as they will continue to pay through their own bank." are always kept vague.
In the Netherlands this boils down to the 'system banks' (the big ones like ING, ABN AMRO, Rabobank, etc.) which grudgingly offer hardware devices for people who won't or can't use a smartphone, and the neobanks (like Revolut, Knab, and Bunq) which make an Android or IOS smartphone a hard requirement.
But you can use Wero also from your good old desktop PC, right? Sure, paying in a restaurant with Wero for example might need this, but I think this is a really, really great first step in the right direction
It’s fine to decouple from US payment and financial infra today and punt on decoupling from US big tech in the future. These changes take time and effort at scale, so it’s about being directionally accurate, not doing all the changes all at once. “You eat an elephant one bite at a time.” Europe is eating the financial infra bites right now. There are other bites to be taken over the next several years.
Similar to Airbus moving critical apps from AWS to France’s Scaleway. Flexing the muscle needed to do the rest, and starting with the most important.
My bank (BOFIIE2D) now gives me the option of instant or standard payments. Both cost the same. And in both cases the money leaves my account instantly. I can just choose whether it arrives at the recipient instantly or after a few days. I have no idea why standard is still an option. Why would I want that?
> instant transfers that cannot cost more than standard transfers
Interesting, I didn't know that. Now, why would anyone want to do a non-instant transfer, then (short of not knowing about it like in my case)? Doesn't this mandate basically make all transfers instant?
My bank sets the default to "Standard (1-3 Days). Many forget to click the checkbox. I have also heard: "I only do instant when I need it" implying some implicit cost/limit they fear. This is probably still worth it for Banks. As not _all_ transfers are now the dreadful super expensive instant variety.
They are allowed to set caps, I've seen them down to around €5000 per transaction so it's not literally all transfers. Still free to transfer above, just takes more than a few seconds to do so, presumably for fraud/theft protection. Some banks will make that a daily limit, or configurable, there's some flexibility but they're mandated to justify all limits with no arbitrary discrimination against instant transfers.
In practice, obviously most personal payments are well under that margin, so within-EU bank transfers are defacto instant everywhere. Most banking apps I've seen don't even show an 'instant/slow' option any more, it's just all instant.
A lot of banks won’t even give you the option of a non-instant transfer now, at least here in Portugal. Though non-instant transfers can in theory be recalled since there is some time before the money gets to the destination account, my bank even gives a warning now when doing a transfer to ensure I have the details right because they can not recall a transaction after the money arrives.
> The Wero app can be installed on any mobile device or tablet running iOS 17.4 or later, or Android 9 or later. We recommend updating your device to the latest version of its operating system for maximum performance and security.
> It is not possible to send Wero payments to friends & family via a web browser or on a computer
Truly independent from US companies ... If you don't have an iOS or an Android device, you are just stuck, once again
> > It is not possible to send Wero payments to friends & family via a web browser or on a computer
Wow, that's a deal breaker for me. I don't need yet another service that's only accessible to a dumbed down device. Here I was hoping that it'd become available in my country as well...
the barrier to spinning up an alternative European Android operating system given that it's open source is not that high, see China, and my money would be on that happening within the next few years.
I recently bought something from fahrrad.de and was surprised to see Wero as an payment option. I don't know what I expected, but scanning the QR code and acknowledging the payment in my banking app worked without any issues.
The whole process had a very "snappy" feeling without waiting for any of the usual spinners and redirects. So... thumbs up, I guess?
Decathlon is pretty neat and technologically advanced actually, so not surprising news for them to adopt Wero.
In eastern European stores they use RFID for every product, so you just throw stuff in a bin without scanning and can self check faster than usual self scan.
Well I have not tried throwing in a bike in a bin or a dumbbell, but I presume it works for 99% of stuff.
Curious what they pay for RFID, last I checked it is about 5-6 cents per item for small quantities.
Not just Eastern European stores, they do it in France (it's a a French company) and India too. First time I saw it was in India, it was very impressive.
They also have a lot of vertical integration, they manufacture many of the products they sell.
I thought it was image recognition but RFID makes more sense. However just last week I accidentally 'hacked' it by having two small identical products thrown in the bin and their cardboard boxes fell right next to each other, so the system saw only one. I had to manually move them apart to have both appear on the bill (that is why I suspected image recognition, RFID should be two separate IDs no?)
In eastern European stores they use RFID for every product, so you just throw stuff in a bin without scanning and can self check faster than usual self scan.
I need to use this thread to mention the Polish payment system Blik. It is one of the most convenient payment systems out there - you generate an ephemeral 6-digit code in your banking app, copy it to the vendor, confirm, done. Works P2P with phone numbers, too.
Interestingly, it would be the perfect system for payments using AI agents - the agent tries to pay, asks user to provide 6-digit code, submits payment request. User confirms via banking app. Done.
There are similar payment options across the EU. There is Bizum in Spain which works in similar way (and also offers phone-to-phone transfers).
There is EMP association (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Mobile_Payment_System...) which both BLIK and Bizum and bunch of others (I'd say majority of Europe) are members of that are already working on integration and Spain and Italy already work.
Basically with Wero on decathlon.de the DACH is discoveryng local-digital-payments and are excited about something that the rest of Europe enjoyed for a long while ;)
There's an interesting angle to BLIK vs Wero. While I believe QR codes are more convenient it is actually possible to give BLIK over the phone. Which means that youngsters (or fraudsters ;)) have access to their guardians' money over the phone line.
There is also a Blik feature to pay in one click - merchant remembers your payment and allows making subsequent payment without code, just by confirming transaction via banking app.
This type of thing (scan QR code) is how basically all payments were done when I was recently in China, via wechat or alipay (either you show your QR code for big shops, or scan their QR code for small shops / vendors. They can just print them out if they want and hang a copy).
I found it superior to other systems I've used in basically every way. Particularly for small market stalls -- I scan their QR code, I enter how much I want to send them. They never get my details, I don't have to trust they didn't fat-finger the price. It also makes it amazingly easy to send money to friends, just scan their code and send them their share of dinner.
It has massive perks, especially in regions where the transaction fee or exchange fee scams run.
(Basically they have a reasonable price showing and when you pay with a credit card you see your banks charges you a huge amount. It can be as simple as in Mexico $ is used for pesos so if the merchant actually charges you USD that's 20x or so rip off).
But... This isn't mutually exclusive, why can't I set a price on my smartphone when I pay by contactless?
The other benefit is that there QR codes are bank transfers. Which have substantially less recourse and less rights for the consumer. Probably doesn't matter for a $10 sandwich but still significant.
I'd much prefer NFC if I could see how much I was paying and had to always confirm it -- I understand this wouldn't have worked with physical cards but I wish it was an option on my phone.
I would claim the main cause why it is more complicated is having VAT and KYC/AML requirements. Transactions can be much easier if you ignore the VAT requirement.
Wow, very cool "The European way to pay online." - so surely they are on f-droid or have an apk download like Signal with build signatures published on their website! Oh, no - they require you to have a Google account and Play Store on your mobile device. Well, false advertising again. Disappointing, but why am I not surprised. Thank you, but no.
Wero shows that marketing is everything. It's just regular bank transactions with a much larger fee. We could have had EPC QR codes and similar completely free technologies instead.
Usually the fee is on merchant (and it's few % depending on region regulations etc.)
Payment providers such as Wero are doing direct bank transfer, which is usually fee-less, but then they can afford to put a on-merchant fee that's much lower than what credit card companies are charging.
Thus the model is win-win-win: Consumer doesn't pay more, Merchant pays less, and Wero gets their share.
Free for individuals, but paid if you're the business it seems from what I've found? If that's the case, it seems to be the same as a card in the US and I wouldn't be surprised if some businesses try to pass it on like they do with cards.
Pix is Brazil is also paid by the merchants. ~0.33%.
Individuals is completely free. You can transfer even to people without bank accounts (and withdraw on places like corner shops and authorized merchants).
For companies certain transfers are free.
eg: my company pays nothing, since I'm not a merchant, one of the banks tried to charge once and I just changed to another that offered 0% in return for keeping investments there.
Some banks offer extra services like POS machines with instant confirmation and so on (so the POS employee don't need access to the company bank account).
We don't support shit until the regular strongly suggests we do and then it takes about three years to do pretty much nothing, but perfectly on time (not on time actually, ts' a lie)
Not really, the UX is the differentiator. That's why neobanks like N26 are popular as you can just send money to your friends via email / phone number but it only works if they are on the same bank.
With Wero it's across all banks, building on the recent instant transfer that is being rolled out quickly while still having the same, familiar UX as PayPal or other apps like that while being a EU solution.
There's two functions of Wero: peer-to-peer and consumer-to-business transactions. TFA is about consumer-to-business.
If you look at the video for how Wero online payments work (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu5_X3oSgHM), you'll see that an EPC QR code could just as well be used (with a banking app installed instead of Wero).
With Wero you probably also get automatic processing of the incoming payment, without having to connect the financial transaction to a purchase yourself. But payment through bank transfers is also available through the payment service providers and costs less than Wero (at least it costs less when using Mollie; the Stripe fee is the same for Wero and bank transfer, and Adyen apparently hasn't published the Wero fee yet). So you'd still get the same service for less money.
I mean, that was always possible and many offered that. Wero offers the PayPal style integrated flow, QR code scanning from your banking app is slightly higher friction
God I wish the US had a digital payment system that we could all basically agree on. Having Apple Pay vs Google Pay vs Zelle vs Paypal vs Venmo vs all the others is annoying as hell.
The first time I read "US store X supports Apple Pay or Google Pay now" I was really confused. I didn't know that was a thing. Here (NL) contactless payments works with every debit card, physical or stored Apple Google/Pay, in every store. There is no difference between payment providers, everyone offers contactless payments and it works with every bank.
(The only exception are credit cards, but they are not used a lot, mostly for online purchases outside The Netherlands or when renting a car abroad.)
> Here (NL) contactless payments works with every debit card, physical or stored Apple Google/Pay, in every store
That's how it works in the US as well. You might be conflating Apple Pay with Apple Wallet, which stores your credit cards for tap-to-pay. Most people in the US use Apple Wallet/Google Wallet to digitally store their credit/debit cards, and use those cards to pay at the store by tapping the POS terminal.
For example, I use Apple Wallet for nearly every transaction, but I never use Apple Pay/Apple Card as the payment method.
Can you point me to any documentation on how to use a credit card in Apple Wallet without using Apple Pay? To my knowledge that is not possible. You might be using Apple Pay without realizing.
Last time I visited NL many shops (including Albert Heijn) only supported Maestro, so as a foreigner you effectively can't pay with Visa or Mastercard.
Not with Visa/Mastercard credit cards, but Visa/Mastercard debit cards work everywhere. In fact, my current main card is a Visa debit card (not Maestro or V-Pay, it has the same code format as a credit card and a CVC code, which my older Maestro/V-Pay cards didn't have).
This is one of the reasons why Garmin Pay is pretty useless here. Most banks only support it with credit cards and a lot of stores do not take credit card-based contactless payments (with some exceptions like e.g. Jumbo and Decathlon).
The reason is that debit cards have been the standard cards since the beginning. Nowadays more people have a credit card for online shopping outside the country, etc. But when I was young my dad had a credit card and that was fairly exceptional.
> The system was conceived by the Dutch banks ABN Amro, ING Bank, Postbank N.V. and Rabobank, to develop a single system for online payments that could be used by all banks.
Currently owned by EPI:
> The European Payments Initiative (EPI) is a unified digital payment service launched in 2020 and backed by sixteen founding European banks and payment service providers.
Before iDEAL we had a similar mess with different banks and even a telco pushing their own payment system. It was basically the Dutch webshop foundation (thuiswinkel.org, basically the webshop lobby) that said: f*ck it banks, clean up your mess! And so it happened.
I mean you could have a single protocol and then various different providers still competing, like email, or how even for Visa or Mastercard there's a bunch of different banks that partner up.
We do, it’s called FedNow, it’s been live for some time. Instant payments for a few cents per transaction, up to $10M per transfer. Why don’t financial institutions switch to it? To keep getting the fees they’re accustom to.
Other countries are working to avoid the US financial infra rake and grift, but you’re captured by it if you’re stuck in the US unfortunately, because the US political will does not exist to compress profits for the financial services industry.
Dutch iDeal|Wero uses incompatible QR codes and a bank selection flow compared to international Wero. The real Wero implementation comes next year.
They're trying to ease in Dutch customers to the Wero brand, but in the mean time they're confusing every tourist or immigrant with their wero-but-not-wero system.
Apparently, and I quote from the article (definitely not an LLM):
"Decathlon didn’t just add a new payment button to its German checkout page. It handed European banks their first big-box sporting goods test case at a moment when competition in digital payments is intensifying and the push for EU-made payment infrastructure is growing."
I've been able to make payments for sporting goods shops here in Finland with a push-payment-local-bank-account flow from the checkout for years, but clearly they weren't European enough.
> Decathlon switched on Wero on decathlon.de on July 20, making Germany the first market in the French group’s international footprint to carry the European payment scheme.
That's probably the cause for confusion, because the Dutch system has been rebranding itself to Wero for ages and switched over permanently very recently.
Decathlon.nl has had Wero for months, though they did it through a different implementation method. Of course, the marketeers prefer to put the focus onto the next-gen system their German counterparts have just implemented.
The Wero system isn't just a rebrand of iDeal. It also includes a wallet app and the ability to transfer money between regular people, not just online checkout.
The article headline screams Claude to me, is that just me? I am as bullish as can be on AI usage, but I’m either hallucinating myself or this is the classic AI “not this, but that” phrase that I keep reading all day.
> Decathlon didn’t just add a new payment button to its German checkout page. It handed European banks their first big-box sporting goods test case at a moment when competition in digital payments is intensifying and the push for EU-made payment infrastructure is growing.
It isn't. WERO is little more than a wrapper around SEPA transactions. They literally tell your bank to make a transaction. They are not a bank themselves so they never see the money or could take it back. That means the only one who might be able to help you is your bank.
If European retailers manage to link Wero payments to loyalty schemes, then everyone will benefit and this could eventually become something. Still, no thread to legacy credit card rails (Mastercard, Visa) for many years. The industry doesn’t expect hockey stick growth AFAIK
There are 16 decathlon locations in 4 provinces. They also have an online store. The Toronto suburbs stores closed. They by no means "basically left Canada". They just left the GTA.
Much to the surprise of many in Ontario, there are quite a few places outside of that province that can be considered Canada.
They seem to have tried and given up in the US as well outside of an online presence. It's a pity, as they make 'ok' gear at good prices. It's perfect for if you're getting into a sport, or know you're going to use it only casually and don't want to spend a lot on high-end gear, but want to avoid getting something that's completely cheap junk.
I've also recently seen a Wero option somewhere in Germany. Probably was the transport authority in Berlin, or an air company, I can't quite remember. Haven't seen it in France yet, though.
I'd like the EU to enforce a payment-system agnostic checkout for webshops, which gives me the same payment options everywhere and which also adds a layer of privacy.
That's like, literally impossible? "Hey I just invented ameliuspay, your shop doesn't support it, go directly to jail"
The closest you have is SEPA because it's universal on all Euro bank accounts. And many webshops do offer it. It doesn't integrate into credit card workflows because it's a push payment - you have to go to your banking app, type the details and send the money, while the website waits. Some people might have to go to an actual bank.
What does that even mean, and how is that "EU payment processor platform" not a payment processor itself, meaning that you're mandating one specific payment processor?
Hacker News moment. Imagine someone over 60 whose career has nothing to do with computers trying to make sense of a list of 45 different payment processors to choose from.
It should also present "pay with your personal information" as a legitimate payment option, which would turn on ads (in case you want that). Otherwise ads should stay hidden and user tracking should not happen.
It's time the EU penalizes companies for pushing only AdTech as a payment option. This is unfair competition for the other payment processors.
In Norway we have a thing similar to Bizum, called Vipps. I.e. a payment method specialized for sending small person-to-person payments, for example useful when buying something second hand in person from another person, or when splitting a restaurant bill, or paying someone for gas when you rode in their car with them, etc etc.
Vipps is also usable as payment method in several online stores here, just like the above mentioned that Bizum can be used for Amazon Spain. I often use Vipps as payment method when it is available in online stores. It’s quick and convenient, and doesn’t involve giving my card details to a third party payment provider.
Aside from my Norwegian bank card and the Vipps that is connected to the same bank account, I also have Revolut, which supports disposable single-use virtual cards which is an excellent idea in theory and I’ve used that a few times too, but I have had too many cases of trying to pay with Revolut disposable single-use virtual cards and it not working so that what should’ve been a great way to avoid giving my card details to all kinds of third parties instead becomes a hassle where I first try disposable and it’s not going through and then I have to use my long-term multi-use card details to pay anyway.
With Vipps I have not had much trouble. There was a time or two such as for example the other day where I paid for something on Finn (similar to Wallapop in Spain) with Vipps and Finn said there was an error and I tried again and Finn still said it errored. But I just left it like that and it resolved itself. Next day when I logged into Finn again, the purchase had completed and in Vipps one of the two pending attempted payments went through and the other one was reverted as it should, without me having had to reach out to neither Finn nor Vipps myself.
I tend to prefer Bizum over my card, as my newfangled debit card has a CVV code that changes every 10 minutes, so I can no longer just autofill the card with a password manager, I MUST open the bank app to get the CVV code.
With Bizum I don't need that, input my phone number, approve the dialogue in the bank app, then for future purchases it's automatically approved. That no fees goes to American companies is just the cherry on top.
(Decathlon Spain also offers Bizum payments, FWIW)
Most EU countries have had some sort of payment standard and use different kinds of setups so it’s not as easy as doing it in one jurisdiction. Also the EU generally is quite conservative and slow.
I get that this is a good thing and long overdue - but the excitement here just underscores for me how expectations in Europe for Europe doing anything truly cutting edge are low.
The precursor to this system (iDEAL) has been running in The Netherlands for 21 years. Pretty much all transactions of Dutch webshops and even a lot of foreign webshops (thanks to Stripe support) by Dutch buyers go through iDEAL, as well as most digital P2P payments in Europe.
Many other EU countries have had similar systems for years, but Wero is standardizing it between a bunch of countries.
I think EU citizens are excited mainly because of winning back their digital sovereignty, nobody said this would be cutting edge technology. Actually the simplicity of the solution is key (Wero is based on EU’s proven SEPA Instant Payment rails).
That being said, what I do not like about Wero is that some parts of the infrastructure is based on AWS and or Google cloud; hopefully they will switch to European clouds, soon.
I wouldn't count on that, in-order to provide rock solid financial service, you definitely need a reliable cloud provider. There is no true equivalent in EU for a cloud provider like that at the moment
This sovereignty debate is the dumbest thing I’ve heard, like a country can be sovereign, but Europe is not a country. It’s like saying Asia is going to be so sovereign. We all saw how the unity of Europe with brexit.
It sounds like a coupon website installing malware to me. But... names are just names. When adoption gets large enough, every name becomes unimportant I guess.
iShares, iDeal, WhatsApp: the Millenial trinity of European essentials :D
I mean, who cares how you pronounce it? Each country will have its own variant, similar to how euro is pronounced differently in different places, and eventually one will become the English status quo
I agree it's always fast and convenient! It doesn't have the buyer protection you get with a credit card (it debits from your account immediately), but for most purchases that is fine.
Credit card companies and services like PayPal extract large amount of wealth, mostly to provide a service (instant payment) for which they are no longer technically necessary.
New systems like Wero (or similar ones already widely established in India or Brazil) are based on instant bank transfers rather than a credit card company that acts as a middle man.
Why do Germans corrupt their own language with that weird pig-German?
On the German Wero site[1], the copy not only uses utterly gratuitous and even made up fake English words where there are perfectly adequate German words, e.g., "senden", hero, support, business, etc.; but the worst part is that they mess up or maybe can't even realize anymore that the German word for hero in "Der absolute Hero für dein Geld!" could have produced a far superior phrase through a rhyme, i.e., "Der absolute Held für dein Geld!". It's nonsensical to use "hero". Why would you use "hero"?
What are you doing, Germans? "Senden" is not a word. You just made that up! Or should I say "you just hooberdoobered it" since we are just making up gibberish words? We don't say "senden"... why are you saying "senden"?? It's like a traumatized child making up a gibberish language to live in a fantasy world. It's not healthy.
It's also really rather discriminatory towards older people who may not know this weird hipster pig-german made up gibberish.
For context for Americans or other actual English speakers, imagine if an American spoke like this:
"Come on, Niemcy, use your own słowa. You are worth it. Leave other ludzie's words for them to use. Have some szacunek. It's kind of żałosne actually. Get it together już." It's Polish, btw.
You are in for a ride with Denglish [1], but also “senden“ is a real word [2] — it is unclear to me from your rant if you’re trying to speak from a position of authority or are just venting for no obvious reason.
Well no. We were just reminded (pretty directly and rudely, I might add) that USA is not always on our side. Nothing wrong with being independent and able to stand on our own feet. Which in turn will benefit USA too, assuming we stay allies.
Wero is such a valuable asset for Europe and couldn't have come at a better time.
It's built on the excellent SEPA system, which standardized bank transfers and "Lastschrift" in Europe. SEPA itself got a huge upgrade last year with mandatory instant transfers that cannot cost more than standard transfers between European checking accounts.
Both of those allowed Wero to happen as a final abstract top layer, meaning: the UX of sending money to an email address with the security and convenience of bank transfers. And everything is built collaboratively on top of European banking infrastructure.
No account necessary and no private american conglomerates can delete that account.
And before some says: "Well, now the government controls everything!": They already did, since... Ever. Now its one less entity with that access and one that can be (hopefully) controlled and changed by a majority.
Note that Wero is amongs others based on the Dutch iDEAL [1] system, which was introduced 21 years ago. Virtually every Dutch web shop supports iDEAL (and many only support iDEAL) as well as international payment services such as PayPal and Stripe. As a result, the vast majority of transactions of Dutch webshops go through iDEAL. It is really a super-nice frictionless system.
iDEAL also supports P2P payments through Tikkie (ABN AMRO) or the payment request option of other banks. You basically show a QR code or send a link and the person paying goes through the iDEAL flow to transfer the money. Tikkie (and the other bank's similar and compatible systems) have been one of the primary methods for P2P transfers for many years now.
I am really happy that we are getting the same system across multiple countries now. Contactless payments through Wero are also planned, so that we can finally become independent of Google/Apple Pay for contactless payments using a phone.
[1] EPI purchased the Dutch iDEAL and Belgian Payconiq and mentioned on multiple occasions that Wero is based on the foundations of iDEAL. They kept iDEAL running as a separate system in order not to disturb it during the upbringing of Wero, but iDeal is going to migrated to Wero the coming period.
> and many only support iDEAL
Actually, look closer when you pay using Ideal (as we all do). You will notice that usually there are several payment methods, and these almost always include credit cards.
The reason for this is not because the Dutch like to pay using credit cards (most Dutch never use one), but because of a little known law regarding online stores. It is, in fact, not allowed to only offer payment options that require the customer to pay the full amount upfront. And Ideal (and Wero) do just that: you order a T-shirt for €20, you pay €20 upfront, the shirt gets shipped, and you receive it.
Now have a look at this note:
https://www.acm.nl/nl/verkoop-aan-consumenten/de-koop-sluite...
> U mag maximaal 50% vooruitbetaling vragen voor producten die u nog moet leveren.
> Dit betekent dat u standaard mag aanbieden om het hele bedrag te betalen. Maar u geeft klanten ook de mogelijkheid om minimaal 50% pas na levering te betalen.
There are almost no online stores which offer this of course. It's just not part of this commercial model. Not for a T-shirt (or whatever).
So what is the trick the government itself even recommends?
Credit cards.
https://ondernemersplein.overheid.nl/geldzaken-en-belastinge...
Something about the way credit card payments reserve payments initially and the way credit cards offer consumer protection services makes this a payment option which, apparently, fulfils this 50% after delivery rule…
To be honest I like the idea of forcing merchants to accept credit cards in addition to this.
Regardless of how much I like the idea of a payments layer without Visa/Mastercard fees, I think the rich engineers of hackernews and 10,000 overpaid consultants who worked on this massively underestimate how valuable an interest-free 30 day bridge loan is to average people (and businesses) on monthly payroll.
Combine this with the consumer protections and threat of a dispute (which almost always sides with the buyer) and it generally tilts power to the consumer in most credit card transactions, if the consumer has autopay setup (huge caveat of course).
This new layer is totally neutral, and removes the detriment to the merchant in terms of fees/risk, but not sure it’s actually as good for the market as claimed here. For me it’s a net loss, and harming consumers ultimately harms the merchant in terms of willingness to buy things. If it becomes trendy for merchants to start refusing credit cards to use this instead, I will be WAY less likely to take a risk on a purchase I’m not 100% confident about.
Im not willing to try new products from most startups for example if I can’t buy on a credit card.
This applies more to the USA than to Europe, where "credit cards" are in fact mostly debit cards (cursory research says 71% vs 26% in America), and ordinary people tend not to be up to their necks in consumer debt. Anecdotally, I've never used an actual credit card in my life.
What was the iDEAL payment option now says iDeal WERO. The Dutch are already using WERO for a couple of months now.
We don't, it's the same ideal 2.0 with a different logo. Literally nothing changed and I saw the exact commits too.
Not really. They just changed the logo to make people get used to the name. The next phase where they start migrating the iDEAL infra into Wero starts in October:
https://www.betaalvereniging.nl/actueel/volgende-fase-migrat...
English version: https://www.betaalvereniging.nl/en/news/next-phase-of-ideal-...
I thought Wero is based on ideal 2.0, which in itself is based on payconiq. Which is quite different from th old ideal system
It's not the same system. iDEAL supports banks to implement payment in their online banking websites, while Wero is Google/Apple ecosystem exclusive.
Wero’s goal is to become a European payment system. Like an iDEAL across EU countries. That requires buy-in from major EU banks, some of which are shareholders of EPI, the company behind Wero.
It’s also a response to the ECB’s digital Euro, a way that banks show the central bank “hey, we the banks are actually capable of creating a good EU-level payment system”.
> while Wero is Google/Apple ecosystem exclusive
It's barely launched in more than 5 EU countries. It's not part of the specs or requirements to only be available in the Google / Apple ecosystem.
From their site:
>It is not possible to send Wero payments to friends & family via a web browser or on a computer
https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599074240...
So its pretty clear they have no plans to support plain browser access. Which is a very strange decision to me.
It's primarily an online payment system, not a money transfer system. It has worked since forever (20+ years, it's a rebranded Dutch system) from web browser. Still does.
The horse's mouth seems to contradict this. The subject is Wero, not Ideal.
> It's not part of the specs or requirements to only be available in the Google / Apple ecosystem.
but at the moment, it is. so he's right to be nervous. from one american duopoly to another.
but i share your optimism that they eventually allow this to work without them.
The commenter is stating that as a fact, which is spreading information that's not true to others reading that.
Perfect is the enemy of good as always. Having a system that is currently available on the two biggest mobile platforms for the launch (Covering probably 99.9% of consumers) is already much better than piping every single transaction through two US mega corps.
Replies from the German GLS bank on mastodon imply that EPI does not support the use case where banks add it to their web interface
https://ruhr.social/@glsbank/116215341782832097 https://ruhr.social/@glsbank/116125936995037426
> Good morning, it's not "our" fault. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about it—Wero is a service offered by EPI, and they've decided to take a "mobile-first" approach for now. Warm regards from Bochum!
As for the prospects of ever seeing banking apps outside of android/ios, there is only https://www.das-parlament.de/wirtschaft/finanzen/wir-bauen-m...
> What about smartphones that run on free and open-source software instead of the commercial operating systems used by the iPhone or Google? > Tanja Müller-Ziegler: This market is still very much a niche one. There are still too few providers, which is why it’s hardly worth offering banking apps for these devices.
> Perfect is the enemy of good as always.
I'm no expert on iDEAL, but being 20 years old, it's older than Android and iOS and presumably supported web based payments from the very beginning. I really don't understand why nowadays people seem to think that app exclusivity is somehow a natural starting point. It's a relatively recent invention.
> they've decided to take a "mobile-first" approach for now
That's hardly a confirmation that it will never be possible ("for now"). It seems like a fair tradeoff for a launch when almost everyone has a smartphone and that's already enforced like that for many parts of life (I'm not saying it's great, but it's a valid tradeoff when alternative options exist) like banking or public transport where the happy path often is a phone app.
iDEAL supports banks to implement payment in their online banking websites
So does Wero, as I cited in another comment:
The Wero app is available only for account holders from the German bank Postbank and the French bank La Banque Postale.
Are you a customer of another Wero-enabled bank? If so, you can easily use Wero within your banking app.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.epicompany....
It's not the same system.
I said that it is based on the iDEAL system:
Wero is built on the foundation of iDEAL, backed by 16 major European banks – including the Dutch banks behind iDEAL.
https://ideal.nl/en/naar-wero
The European Payments Initiative (EPI) acquired the Dutch payment system iDEAL with the aim of making it the standard payment solution across all European countries. [...] The first step is to make iDEAL the standard in France and Germany because the countries don’t yet have a standard payment system for e-commerce, according to AD. Customers in the Netherlands will notice little of this.
https://nltimes.nl/2023/04/25/dutch-payment-processor-ideal-... / https://www.ad.nl/economie/online-betalingssysteem-ideal-wor...
Really? I frequently use Wero but never installed their app. I use it through my bank application on /e/os
> No account necessary and no private american conglomerates can delete that account.
Officially you need a Google or Apple account to download a wero capable app from their stores, and Google and Apple can always delete all wero capable apps from their stores like for example with Russian sanctioned banks.
Some banking apps work on non - google play controlled android smartphones, but always only accidentally. Some banks like for example Consorbank already crack down on "sideloading" their app at all: https://www.reddit.com/r/Consorsbank/comments/1p909w1/commen...
If Wero is going to be similar to iDEAL, which it is based on, the payment flow will be through your bank's app. Heck, even the Wero app description says so:
The Wero app is available only for account holders from the German bank Postbank and the French bank La Banque Postale.
Are you a customer of another Wero-enabled bank? If so, you can easily use Wero within your banking app.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.epicompany....
I have seen quite some people downloading their banking apps through the Aurora store (admittedly, it's a frontend for the Play Store, but you don't need an account or the app). Or you can use something like APKMirror and verify that they have the correct signing keys.
Of course, if they need Play Services or Play Integrity basic, then you need sandboxed Google Play or microG. If your bank does remote attestation through Play Integrity, then it is game over, but it is worth contacting your bank. E.g. some banks have added the GrapheneOS signing keys and added support for AOSP remote attestation.
Im a German with a German Postbank account, living in Switzerland.
Wero app Play Store page: "This item isn't available in your country."
Hard to cheer for a thing when it prevents you to access your own money, and promises to "easily pay" immediately fall flat.
Paypal is bad but at least it doesn't fail at step 0.
To be fair, how is Google blocking you from downloading an app, a Wero problem though?
The publisher, in this case Postbank, decides what countries to allow installs from for an app. Google just enforces the policy the publisher sets.
Country availability is a policy set up by the app publisher, not a Google policy
Which is complete bullshit with the Euro having been specifically invented to be used across the EU.
I had a similar moment of stupidifiedment trying to park in Germany with a phone set to Dutch region. Euro in cash works everywhere Euros are accepted but apps on the freaking Internet? Nah, gotta restrict that to the publisher country only.
Switzerland is not part of the EU nor the Eurozone though. It's still a shortsighted stance of Postbank not to open the app to at least the DACH region, but that specific argument carries little weight.
I accidentally skipped that part :(
I can pay with iDEAL without interacting with a smartphone, using only my laptop and a physical 2FA device provided by my bank. Do you know if this will be possible with Wero?
I am not 100% sure, but I think PSD3 will require that authentication methods without a smartphone are provided:
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/fr/qanda_...
Require payment services providers to ensure that all users can benefit from methods to perform SCA which are adapted to their needs and situations and, in particular, that those methods do not depend on one single technology, device or mechanism, for instance on the possession of a smartphone.
It's up to your bank actually. Banks (generally) don't want to pay for your hardware key so you need to do a special dance to trigger their compliance bound neural pathways to send you one.
But then the true bliss will arrive the next year with eidas 3.0 or whatever it is called
I have German bank accounts at two different banks and can send SEPA SCT instant transactions via webinterface and physical tan generator with both of them. Wero however is restricted to mobile apps regardless of what your tan generator is and in fact from what I heard, banks generally force you to switch to mobile app tan generators when opting into Wero.
The GLS bank implies it's not up to them. Generally I feel like implementation details are intentionally not made public. For example so far there is no definitive statement on the public internet I could find about whether iDEAL web based payments will still be available after iDEAL will actually switch to Wero. Statements like "For consumers, the online payment experience will remain largely unchanged, as they will continue to pay through their own bank." are always kept vague.
In the Netherlands this boils down to the 'system banks' (the big ones like ING, ABN AMRO, Rabobank, etc.) which grudgingly offer hardware devices for people who won't or can't use a smartphone, and the neobanks (like Revolut, Knab, and Bunq) which make an Android or IOS smartphone a hard requirement.
With Nordea, you get a code book full of one-time codes.
But you can use Wero also from your good old desktop PC, right? Sure, paying in a restaurant with Wero for example might need this, but I think this is a really, really great first step in the right direction
While researching Wero initially, I was confused too that no APK is offered. Maybe we can change that.grbn
It’s fine to decouple from US payment and financial infra today and punt on decoupling from US big tech in the future. These changes take time and effort at scale, so it’s about being directionally accurate, not doing all the changes all at once. “You eat an elephant one bite at a time.” Europe is eating the financial infra bites right now. There are other bites to be taken over the next several years.
Similar to Airbus moving critical apps from AWS to France’s Scaleway. Flexing the muscle needed to do the rest, and starting with the most important.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
I heard a loud and solid "fuck US" from the people forming the technical opinion on this matter.
The way selection function for the technical parties in this conversation is going makes it double the fun.
My bank (BOFIIE2D) now gives me the option of instant or standard payments. Both cost the same. And in both cases the money leaves my account instantly. I can just choose whether it arrives at the recipient instantly or after a few days. I have no idea why standard is still an option. Why would I want that?
> instant transfers that cannot cost more than standard transfers
Interesting, I didn't know that. Now, why would anyone want to do a non-instant transfer, then (short of not knowing about it like in my case)? Doesn't this mandate basically make all transfers instant?
My bank sets the default to "Standard (1-3 Days). Many forget to click the checkbox. I have also heard: "I only do instant when I need it" implying some implicit cost/limit they fear. This is probably still worth it for Banks. As not _all_ transfers are now the dreadful super expensive instant variety.
They are allowed to set caps, I've seen them down to around €5000 per transaction so it's not literally all transfers. Still free to transfer above, just takes more than a few seconds to do so, presumably for fraud/theft protection. Some banks will make that a daily limit, or configurable, there's some flexibility but they're mandated to justify all limits with no arbitrary discrimination against instant transfers.
In practice, obviously most personal payments are well under that margin, so within-EU bank transfers are defacto instant everywhere. Most banking apps I've seen don't even show an 'instant/slow' option any more, it's just all instant.
A lot of banks won’t even give you the option of a non-instant transfer now, at least here in Portugal. Though non-instant transfers can in theory be recalled since there is some time before the money gets to the destination account, my bank even gives a warning now when doing a transfer to ensure I have the details right because they can not recall a transaction after the money arrives.
You have 1 hour to recall and cancel a transfer, but an instant transfer is non cancellable
But now every bank needs to support and implement it separately. My bank doesn't so far which is annoying.
> the UX of sending money to an email address
> No account necessary and no private american conglomerates can delete that account.
Who owns domain names (which emails require)? No, don't say people do, people don't own domain names, they lease them, and it's not a right either.
You can get the domains from your local European nations registrar though. How is the American conglomerate going to prevent that?
I frequently run into failed SEPA transfers. At least three per month out of ~200. So it could use some more stability for my use case.
In all fairness, I also have a couple of VISA payments that fail every month.
> The Wero app can be installed on any mobile device or tablet running iOS 17.4 or later, or Android 9 or later. We recommend updating your device to the latest version of its operating system for maximum performance and security.
> It is not possible to send Wero payments to friends & family via a web browser or on a computer
Truly independent from US companies ... If you don't have an iOS or an Android device, you are just stuck, once again
> > It is not possible to send Wero payments to friends & family via a web browser or on a computer
Wow, that's a deal breaker for me. I don't need yet another service that's only accessible to a dumbed down device. Here I was hoping that it'd become available in my country as well...
One step at a time. Until then, you can use Murena or GrapheneOS.
AfAIK wero needs Google Play Integrity. So you are still stuck with Google.
When that are said. I 100% agree with you - one step at a time.
I think Wero will no longer depend on that in 3–5 years. It's just real challenges that the European banking system needs to figure out.
The EU works slow, but it does move :)
Kind of like the Ents in LOTR
That second quote is truly a sentence of all time. It is not possible to use this [computer payment system] on a computer...
You can use your PC
Can you elaborate?
the barrier to spinning up an alternative European Android operating system given that it's open source is not that high, see China, and my money would be on that happening within the next few years.
I recently bought something from fahrrad.de and was surprised to see Wero as an payment option. I don't know what I expected, but scanning the QR code and acknowledging the payment in my banking app worked without any issues. The whole process had a very "snappy" feeling without waiting for any of the usual spinners and redirects. So... thumbs up, I guess?
Decathlon is pretty neat and technologically advanced actually, so not surprising news for them to adopt Wero.
In eastern European stores they use RFID for every product, so you just throw stuff in a bin without scanning and can self check faster than usual self scan.
Well I have not tried throwing in a bike in a bin or a dumbbell, but I presume it works for 99% of stuff.
Curious what they pay for RFID, last I checked it is about 5-6 cents per item for small quantities.
Not just Eastern European stores, they do it in France (it's a a French company) and India too. First time I saw it was in India, it was very impressive.
They also have a lot of vertical integration, they manufacture many of the products they sell.
Can confirm they do this in Canada too. Though I'm not sure they have much of a presence outside of Quebec.
It was very cool to try, and very much a "why doesn't everyone do this?" feature. I've never seen it anywhere else.
Is there somewhere they don't do this?
I thought it was image recognition but RFID makes more sense. However just last week I accidentally 'hacked' it by having two small identical products thrown in the bin and their cardboard boxes fell right next to each other, so the system saw only one. I had to manually move them apart to have both appear on the bill (that is why I suspected image recognition, RFID should be two separate IDs no?)
In eastern European stores they use RFID for every product, so you just throw stuff in a bin without scanning and can self check faster than usual self scan.
Yep, same here in West Europe.
Well I have not tried throwing in a bike
Haha, that would make a great Youtube skit.
If you have a bike or something, staff will scan its barcode for you. They generally see you coming and you don't have to wait.
I need to use this thread to mention the Polish payment system Blik. It is one of the most convenient payment systems out there - you generate an ephemeral 6-digit code in your banking app, copy it to the vendor, confirm, done. Works P2P with phone numbers, too.
Interestingly, it would be the perfect system for payments using AI agents - the agent tries to pay, asks user to provide 6-digit code, submits payment request. User confirms via banking app. Done.
There are similar payment options across the EU. There is Bizum in Spain which works in similar way (and also offers phone-to-phone transfers).
There is EMP association (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Mobile_Payment_System...) which both BLIK and Bizum and bunch of others (I'd say majority of Europe) are members of that are already working on integration and Spain and Italy already work.
https://www.corporate.sibs.com/europa-the-future-of-payments...
Basically with Wero on decathlon.de the DACH is discoveryng local-digital-payments and are excited about something that the rest of Europe enjoyed for a long while ;)
There's an interesting angle to BLIK vs Wero. While I believe QR codes are more convenient it is actually possible to give BLIK over the phone. Which means that youngsters (or fraudsters ;)) have access to their guardians' money over the phone line.
QR codes are still less convenient when you're paying using the same mobile device you're using to generate the BLIK codes.
Doubly so when the phone is a foldable, so you can keep the bank open in a popup over the browser or app you're buying in.
There is also a Blik feature to pay in one click - merchant remembers your payment and allows making subsequent payment without code, just by confirming transaction via banking app.
This type of thing (scan QR code) is how basically all payments were done when I was recently in China, via wechat or alipay (either you show your QR code for big shops, or scan their QR code for small shops / vendors. They can just print them out if they want and hang a copy).
I found it superior to other systems I've used in basically every way. Particularly for small market stalls -- I scan their QR code, I enter how much I want to send them. They never get my details, I don't have to trust they didn't fat-finger the price. It also makes it amazingly easy to send money to friends, just scan their code and send them their share of dinner.
It has massive perks, especially in regions where the transaction fee or exchange fee scams run.
(Basically they have a reasonable price showing and when you pay with a credit card you see your banks charges you a huge amount. It can be as simple as in Mexico $ is used for pesos so if the merchant actually charges you USD that's 20x or so rip off).
But... This isn't mutually exclusive, why can't I set a price on my smartphone when I pay by contactless?
The other benefit is that there QR codes are bank transfers. Which have substantially less recourse and less rights for the consumer. Probably doesn't matter for a $10 sandwich but still significant.
To me NFC is superior. It checks all the boxes you mentioned plus quicker / last steps
I'd much prefer NFC if I could see how much I was paying and had to always confirm it -- I understand this wouldn't have worked with physical cards but I wish it was an option on my phone.
I would claim the main cause why it is more complicated is having VAT and KYC/AML requirements. Transactions can be much easier if you ignore the VAT requirement.
Wow, very cool "The European way to pay online." - so surely they are on f-droid or have an apk download like Signal with build signatures published on their website! Oh, no - they require you to have a Google account and Play Store on your mobile device. Well, false advertising again. Disappointing, but why am I not surprised. Thank you, but no.
Wero shows that marketing is everything. It's just regular bank transactions with a much larger fee. We could have had EPC QR codes and similar completely free technologies instead.
Wero’s website says they don’t charge fees
So who is charging the fees?
They most likely don't charge fees on consumer.
Usually the fee is on merchant (and it's few % depending on region regulations etc.) Payment providers such as Wero are doing direct bank transfer, which is usually fee-less, but then they can afford to put a on-merchant fee that's much lower than what credit card companies are charging.
Thus the model is win-win-win: Consumer doesn't pay more, Merchant pays less, and Wero gets their share.
Card fee in EU is maximum 0.2% for debit and 0.3% for credit. By law.
Card companies hated this. They said they'd lose money and have to pull out of the EU entirely if it passed. Turns out, they lied!
Free for individuals, but paid if you're the business it seems from what I've found? If that's the case, it seems to be the same as a card in the US and I wouldn't be surprised if some businesses try to pass it on like they do with cards.
[0] https://www.mollie.com/growth/wero-payment-guide#:~:text=How...
[1] https://www.bnpparibasfortis.be/en/public/faq/how-much-does-...
Pix is Brazil is also paid by the merchants. ~0.33%.
Individuals is completely free. You can transfer even to people without bank accounts (and withdraw on places like corner shops and authorized merchants).
For companies certain transfers are free. eg: my company pays nothing, since I'm not a merchant, one of the banks tried to charge once and I just changed to another that offered 0% in return for keeping investments there.
Some banks offer extra services like POS machines with instant confirmation and so on (so the POS employee don't need access to the company bank account).
How much is in this case?
>Our pricing is clear and merchant-friendly: a small percentage fee with built-in caps
https://wero-wallet.eu/e-m-commerce
So they charge a fee, but they don't specify what a "small percentage" is.
> Our pricing is clear and merchant-friendly: a small percentage fee with built-in caps
That's why it's impossible to find on that link what their fee is. It's so clear that it's invisible.
The payment service provider (like Stripe or Adyen).
> We could have had EPC QR codes and similar completely free technologies instead.
Technically you can anyway, I used that a few months ago. Bank app support is the big impediment (https://epc-qr.eu/bankreviews/)
We don't support shit until the regular strongly suggests we do and then it takes about three years to do pretty much nothing, but perfectly on time (not on time actually, ts' a lie)
Not really, the UX is the differentiator. That's why neobanks like N26 are popular as you can just send money to your friends via email / phone number but it only works if they are on the same bank.
With Wero it's across all banks, building on the recent instant transfer that is being rolled out quickly while still having the same, familiar UX as PayPal or other apps like that while being a EU solution.
There's two functions of Wero: peer-to-peer and consumer-to-business transactions. TFA is about consumer-to-business.
If you look at the video for how Wero online payments work (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu5_X3oSgHM), you'll see that an EPC QR code could just as well be used (with a banking app installed instead of Wero).
With Wero you probably also get automatic processing of the incoming payment, without having to connect the financial transaction to a purchase yourself. But payment through bank transfers is also available through the payment service providers and costs less than Wero (at least it costs less when using Mollie; the Stripe fee is the same for Wero and bank transfer, and Adyen apparently hasn't published the Wero fee yet). So you'd still get the same service for less money.
I mean, that was always possible and many offered that. Wero offers the PayPal style integrated flow, QR code scanning from your banking app is slightly higher friction
God I wish the US had a digital payment system that we could all basically agree on. Having Apple Pay vs Google Pay vs Zelle vs Paypal vs Venmo vs all the others is annoying as hell.
The first time I read "US store X supports Apple Pay or Google Pay now" I was really confused. I didn't know that was a thing. Here (NL) contactless payments works with every debit card, physical or stored Apple Google/Pay, in every store. There is no difference between payment providers, everyone offers contactless payments and it works with every bank.
(The only exception are credit cards, but they are not used a lot, mostly for online purchases outside The Netherlands or when renting a car abroad.)
> Here (NL) contactless payments works with every debit card, physical or stored Apple Google/Pay, in every store
That's how it works in the US as well. You might be conflating Apple Pay with Apple Wallet, which stores your credit cards for tap-to-pay. Most people in the US use Apple Wallet/Google Wallet to digitally store their credit/debit cards, and use those cards to pay at the store by tapping the POS terminal.
For example, I use Apple Wallet for nearly every transaction, but I never use Apple Pay/Apple Card as the payment method.
Can you point me to any documentation on how to use a credit card in Apple Wallet without using Apple Pay? To my knowledge that is not possible. You might be using Apple Pay without realizing.
https://www.wikihow.com/Add-Cards-to-Apple-Wallet
> Once added, your card can be used to pay for things anywhere Apple Pay is accepted
The method described in that guide is basically how you setup Apple Pay.
Apple Wallet is simply where the card is located on your phone. Once you use it to pay, you will use Apple Pay.
Last time I visited NL many shops (including Albert Heijn) only supported Maestro, so as a foreigner you effectively can't pay with Visa or Mastercard.
Not with Visa/Mastercard credit cards, but Visa/Mastercard debit cards work everywhere. In fact, my current main card is a Visa debit card (not Maestro or V-Pay, it has the same code format as a credit card and a CVC code, which my older Maestro/V-Pay cards didn't have).
This is one of the reasons why Garmin Pay is pretty useless here. Most banks only support it with credit cards and a lot of stores do not take credit card-based contactless payments (with some exceptions like e.g. Jumbo and Decathlon).
The reason is that debit cards have been the standard cards since the beginning. Nowadays more people have a credit card for online shopping outside the country, etc. But when I was young my dad had a credit card and that was fairly exceptional.
Back then there was still GWK. You could buy rolls of nickels to add some weight to your savings, american dollars and other foreign monies.
I'd buy myself a shitload of rupees (for a couple of tenners) if they were still around. Such a missed chance.
It is one of these instances where « let the market decide » is not necessarily the best option on the long run.
The market wants to take a cut per transaction, perpetually. At a high profit margin.
This is one where not the market but a country/group of countries need to rollout their own public payments so fees are minimal to zero.
You mean, communism?
(/s but you never know especially these days)
Ideal was a result of free market banking though.
> The system was conceived by the Dutch banks ABN Amro, ING Bank, Postbank N.V. and Rabobank, to develop a single system for online payments that could be used by all banks.
Currently owned by EPI:
> The European Payments Initiative (EPI) is a unified digital payment service launched in 2020 and backed by sixteen founding European banks and payment service providers.
Before iDEAL we had a similar mess with different banks and even a telco pushing their own payment system. It was basically the Dutch webshop foundation (thuiswinkel.org, basically the webshop lobby) that said: f*ck it banks, clean up your mess! And so it happened.
They even tried to extend it to other European countries in 2011: https://www.bnnvara.nl/kassa/artikelen/ideal-in-de-ban-van-m...
Ideal is great. The missing part of the free market is that the other part of it (consumers) expecting you to not be an asshole.
I mean you could have a single protocol and then various different providers still competing, like email, or how even for Visa or Mastercard there's a bunch of different banks that partner up.
We do, it’s called FedNow, it’s been live for some time. Instant payments for a few cents per transaction, up to $10M per transfer. Why don’t financial institutions switch to it? To keep getting the fees they’re accustom to.
Other countries are working to avoid the US financial infra rake and grift, but you’re captured by it if you’re stuck in the US unfortunately, because the US political will does not exist to compress profits for the financial services industry.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48415854
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48416032
FedNow Is Live - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36801491 - July 2023 (1022 comments)
Almost like regulation is sometimes helpful if the market doesn't solve it.
Why is this news? In the Netherlands the ideal system is already replaced by Wero ? What am I missing.
Dutch iDeal|Wero uses incompatible QR codes and a bank selection flow compared to international Wero. The real Wero implementation comes next year.
They're trying to ease in Dutch customers to the Wero brand, but in the mean time they're confusing every tourist or immigrant with their wero-but-not-wero system.
Apparently, and I quote from the article (definitely not an LLM):
"Decathlon didn’t just add a new payment button to its German checkout page. It handed European banks their first big-box sporting goods test case at a moment when competition in digital payments is intensifying and the push for EU-made payment infrastructure is growing."
I've been able to make payments for sporting goods shops here in Finland with a push-payment-local-bank-account flow from the checkout for years, but clearly they weren't European enough.
It’s not about the Netherlands, that’s what you seem to be misunderstanding
The article is about Europe and the last time I checked, the Netherlands is in Europe.
> Decathlon Germany adds Wero payment option to decathlon.de website
From the article:
> Decathlon switched on Wero on decathlon.de on July 20, making Germany the first market in the French group’s international footprint to carry the European payment scheme.
That's probably the cause for confusion, because the Dutch system has been rebranding itself to Wero for ages and switched over permanently very recently.
Decathlon.nl has had Wero for months, though they did it through a different implementation method. Of course, the marketeers prefer to put the focus onto the next-gen system their German counterparts have just implemented.
Yea was scratching my head why this is news, 90% of dutch webshop for the past 15 years have had ideal (precursor to wero) lol
Seems to be a weird marketing article
The Wero system isn't just a rebrand of iDeal. It also includes a wallet app and the ability to transfer money between regular people, not just online checkout.
The article headline screams Claude to me, is that just me? I am as bullish as can be on AI usage, but I’m either hallucinating myself or this is the classic AI “not this, but that” phrase that I keep reading all day.
> Decathlon didn’t just add a new payment button to its German checkout page. It handed European banks their first big-box sporting goods test case at a moment when competition in digital payments is intensifying and the push for EU-made payment infrastructure is growing.
Yes, I also felt that. FWIW Pangram says "moderately AI-assisted".
> competition in digital payments
What competition? Here in the Netherlands, iDeal (which is already renamed to Wero) has almost no competition. Perhaps PayPal a few percent
In Germany PayPal is pretty huge
as well as VDSL internet and briefs.
Visa
MasterCard
I always use Paypal because they have buyers protection, and this has already saved me countless of times.
Would like to see if this is also offered in the Wero ecosystem?
It isn't. WERO is little more than a wrapper around SEPA transactions. They literally tell your bank to make a transaction. They are not a bank themselves so they never see the money or could take it back. That means the only one who might be able to help you is your bank.
Related:
Lidl Introduces the European Payment Method Wero in Germany
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49060205
If European retailers manage to link Wero payments to loyalty schemes, then everyone will benefit and this could eventually become something. Still, no thread to legacy credit card rails (Mastercard, Visa) for many years. The industry doesn’t expect hockey stick growth AFAIK
It sucks that decathlon basically left Canada after a short trial run. I think it really came down to crappy marketing overall.
https://www.decathlon.ca/en/store-locator
There are 16 decathlon locations in 4 provinces. They also have an online store. The Toronto suburbs stores closed. They by no means "basically left Canada". They just left the GTA.
Much to the surprise of many in Ontario, there are quite a few places outside of that province that can be considered Canada.
They are still in lots of cities outside Toronto.
Are you sure? I spoke about decathlon in Canada with a friend of mine living there (Ottawa) and she says it’s there.
They seem to have tried and given up in the US as well outside of an online presence. It's a pity, as they make 'ok' gear at good prices. It's perfect for if you're getting into a sport, or know you're going to use it only casually and don't want to spend a lot on high-end gear, but want to avoid getting something that's completely cheap junk.
I've also recently seen a Wero option somewhere in Germany. Probably was the transport authority in Berlin, or an air company, I can't quite remember. Haven't seen it in France yet, though.
I'd like the EU to enforce a payment-system agnostic checkout for webshops, which gives me the same payment options everywhere and which also adds a layer of privacy.
That's like, literally impossible? "Hey I just invented ameliuspay, your shop doesn't support it, go directly to jail"
The closest you have is SEPA because it's universal on all Euro bank accounts. And many webshops do offer it. It doesn't integrate into credit card workflows because it's a push payment - you have to go to your banking app, type the details and send the money, while the website waits. Some people might have to go to an actual bank.
If ameliuspay is properly registered with the EU payment processor platform, then it should automatically appear as an option in the webshop.
What does that even mean, and how is that "EU payment processor platform" not a payment processor itself, meaning that you're mandating one specific payment processor?
Hacker News moment. Imagine someone over 60 whose career has nothing to do with computers trying to make sense of a list of 45 different payment processors to choose from.
And if they miss even one of those 45, EU enforcers burn their business to the ground. Oops, now it's 46. No, 47.
It should also present "pay with your personal information" as a legitimate payment option, which would turn on ads (in case you want that). Otherwise ads should stay hidden and user tracking should not happen.
It's time the EU penalizes companies for pushing only AdTech as a payment option. This is unfair competition for the other payment processors.
In Spain we can pay using Bizum on many websites, including Amazon.
For Amazon Spain I use my debit card. Is there an upside to using Bizum?
In Norway we have a thing similar to Bizum, called Vipps. I.e. a payment method specialized for sending small person-to-person payments, for example useful when buying something second hand in person from another person, or when splitting a restaurant bill, or paying someone for gas when you rode in their car with them, etc etc.
Vipps is also usable as payment method in several online stores here, just like the above mentioned that Bizum can be used for Amazon Spain. I often use Vipps as payment method when it is available in online stores. It’s quick and convenient, and doesn’t involve giving my card details to a third party payment provider.
Aside from my Norwegian bank card and the Vipps that is connected to the same bank account, I also have Revolut, which supports disposable single-use virtual cards which is an excellent idea in theory and I’ve used that a few times too, but I have had too many cases of trying to pay with Revolut disposable single-use virtual cards and it not working so that what should’ve been a great way to avoid giving my card details to all kinds of third parties instead becomes a hassle where I first try disposable and it’s not going through and then I have to use my long-term multi-use card details to pay anyway.
With Vipps I have not had much trouble. There was a time or two such as for example the other day where I paid for something on Finn (similar to Wallapop in Spain) with Vipps and Finn said there was an error and I tried again and Finn still said it errored. But I just left it like that and it resolved itself. Next day when I logged into Finn again, the purchase had completed and in Vipps one of the two pending attempted payments went through and the other one was reverted as it should, without me having had to reach out to neither Finn nor Vipps myself.
Apparently there is a plan for interoperability between vipps and wero. https://epicompany.eu/media-insights/bancomat-bizum-epi-sibs...
I tend to prefer Bizum over my card, as my newfangled debit card has a CVV code that changes every 10 minutes, so I can no longer just autofill the card with a password manager, I MUST open the bank app to get the CVV code.
With Bizum I don't need that, input my phone number, approve the dialogue in the bank app, then for future purchases it's automatically approved. That no fees goes to American companies is just the cherry on top.
(Decathlon Spain also offers Bizum payments, FWIW)
> my newfangled debit card has a CVV code that changes every 10 minutes, ...
Wow, is it using e-paper? Cool!
> ..., I MUST open the bank app to get the CVV code.
Ah. Gotcha.
> Wow, is it using e-paper? Cool!
That would be cool, but no, the physical card itself has no numbers on it all in any shape or form, not even the expiry date.
Got it. In my case I don’t have to use my bank app at all. Just go to checkout with Amazon and it automatically charges it from my bank account.
Technological independence from the US, which in recent times has proven not to be a reliable partner for the European Union.
After the pandemic, Germany truly picked up cashless payments. But still a long way to go, especially to prevent tax evasion
I like the Taiwanese approach. Every receipt is a lottery ticket, so people have good reason to demand registered receipts.
Isn't Wero just another proprietary app that requires a Google or Apple smartphone? Can I use it from my web browser like I can with PayPal?
such a slow roll-out, Brazil implementation of Pix was ridiculously faster.
Most EU countries have had some sort of payment standard and use different kinds of setups so it’s not as easy as doing it in one jurisdiction. Also the EU generally is quite conservative and slow.
Can we start to accept Wero as a Web marchant ?
Looks like the PSP don't really lower the fees of Wero transactions right now.
I get that this is a good thing and long overdue - but the excitement here just underscores for me how expectations in Europe for Europe doing anything truly cutting edge are low.
The precursor to this system (iDEAL) has been running in The Netherlands for 21 years. Pretty much all transactions of Dutch webshops and even a lot of foreign webshops (thanks to Stripe support) by Dutch buyers go through iDEAL, as well as most digital P2P payments in Europe.
Many other EU countries have had similar systems for years, but Wero is standardizing it between a bunch of countries.
I think EU citizens are excited mainly because of winning back their digital sovereignty, nobody said this would be cutting edge technology. Actually the simplicity of the solution is key (Wero is based on EU’s proven SEPA Instant Payment rails).
That being said, what I do not like about Wero is that some parts of the infrastructure is based on AWS and or Google cloud; hopefully they will switch to European clouds, soon.
I wouldn't count on that, in-order to provide rock solid financial service, you definitely need a reliable cloud provider. There is no true equivalent in EU for a cloud provider like that at the moment
To me this is like saying that it is no use trying to prevent your arm from being cut off because if you try you will lose a finger.
What use is american cloud reliability if it can't be trusted in with sovereignty the first place?
This sovereignty debate is the dumbest thing I’ve heard, like a country can be sovereign, but Europe is not a country. It’s like saying Asia is going to be so sovereign. We all saw how the unity of Europe with brexit.
The excitement isn't about innovation but about solving a problem: Increasingly unreliable US in payment system
iDeal is amazing and it's great it's coming to the rest of Europe, even if they gave it a worse name.
Here in the Benelux it's the go-to payment option for ecommerce.
I think this will be a much bigger threat to Visa and Mastercard than the oft-promised digital Euro.
Afaik the system is being consolidated
https://epicompany.eu/media-insights/ideal-to-phase-into-wer...
« iDEAL will begin rebranding to iDEAL | Wero in 2026 »
> I think this will be a much bigger threat to Visa and Mastercard than the oft-promised digital Euro.
Not just the American card networks but also a threat to the US Dollar as the reserve currency and the power it gives to the USA
Hence why USA is unhappy with Brazil over their Pix system
I actually like Wero a lot as a name, sound like virtual euro to me.
I don't think the name is that bad. iDeal sounds very dated to me as a native English speaker.
It sounds like a coupon website installing malware to me. But... names are just names. When adoption gets large enough, every name becomes unimportant I guess.
iShares, iDeal, WhatsApp: the Millenial trinity of European essentials :D
How would you even pronounce wero as a native English speaker?
We - ro? Wer-o?
At least iDeal was unambiguous.
> How would you even pronounce wero as a native English speaker?
Thankfully, only about 2% of the EU population speaks English natively.
[0] https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/ebsm/api/public/deliverable/dow... Page 10
I heard the gimmick was euro (you-ro) -- wero (we-ro). Which leaves ayero and dayro.
I mean, who cares how you pronounce it? Each country will have its own variant, similar to how euro is pronounced differently in different places, and eventually one will become the English status quo
Okay, jello
> I think this will be a much bigger threat to Visa and Mastercard than the oft-promised digital Euro
Wasn't the digital Euro specifically crippled due to banks lobbying against it to promote Wero instead?
I haven't heard of crippling d. euro, but wero is specifically built by European banks, to try to corner the market before d. euro comes.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised regarding lobbying.
I agree it's always fast and convenient! It doesn't have the buyer protection you get with a credit card (it debits from your account immediately), but for most purchases that is fine.
Well I guess I have good news for you (and bad news for Dutch merchants), because Wero does offer the ability to dispute.
Credit card companies and services like PayPal extract large amount of wealth, mostly to provide a service (instant payment) for which they are no longer technically necessary.
New systems like Wero (or similar ones already widely established in India or Brazil) are based on instant bank transfers rather than a credit card company that acts as a middle man.
Presse release: https://einblicke.decathlon.de/presse/pressekit/digitale-inn...
Why do Germans corrupt their own language with that weird pig-German?
On the German Wero site[1], the copy not only uses utterly gratuitous and even made up fake English words where there are perfectly adequate German words, e.g., "senden", hero, support, business, etc.; but the worst part is that they mess up or maybe can't even realize anymore that the German word for hero in "Der absolute Hero für dein Geld!" could have produced a far superior phrase through a rhyme, i.e., "Der absolute Held für dein Geld!". It's nonsensical to use "hero". Why would you use "hero"?
What are you doing, Germans? "Senden" is not a word. You just made that up! Or should I say "you just hooberdoobered it" since we are just making up gibberish words? We don't say "senden"... why are you saying "senden"?? It's like a traumatized child making up a gibberish language to live in a fantasy world. It's not healthy.
It's also really rather discriminatory towards older people who may not know this weird hipster pig-german made up gibberish.
For context for Americans or other actual English speakers, imagine if an American spoke like this:
"Come on, Niemcy, use your own słowa. You are worth it. Leave other ludzie's words for them to use. Have some szacunek. It's kind of żałosne actually. Get it together już." It's Polish, btw.
Does that convey the level of cringe? It's weird!
[1] https://wero-wallet.eu/de/uber,
You are in for a ride with Denglish [1], but also “senden“ is a real word [2] — it is unclear to me from your rant if you’re trying to speak from a position of authority or are just venting for no obvious reason.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denglisch
[2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/senden
> It's nonsensical to use "hero". Why would you use "hero"?
Because it rhymes with Wero (or with Vero)
And "senden" is absolutely a word, duh
Europeans are anti American nowadays.
Well no. We were just reminded (pretty directly and rudely, I might add) that USA is not always on our side. Nothing wrong with being independent and able to stand on our own feet. Which in turn will benefit USA too, assuming we stay allies.