From what I've gathered, they've decided to make this completely unusable without a Google- or Apple-approved smartphone. Horrible! Are individual banks even allowed to make that an option for clients? Though even if they are, I doubt any will.
I would LOVE a PayPal alternative, but this is just not it.
If it works, it's by happenstance not officially. According to the link above (official FAQ):
> If the operating system is an Android variant (also called a 'custom ROM'), such as LineageOS or Pixel Experience, then the wero app can’t be installed for security reasons.
As long as it works on a degoogled Android phone I'm fine with it. Maybe someone in the supported countries with an GraphenOS or /e/OS phone can confirm?
Edit: for some banks it will just forward to the bank's app. So most likely it works as long as your bank supports degoogled Android, similar to how iDEAL + Tikkie works on degoogled Android with most Dutch banks.
> I’m seeing this error message: "Your device does not meet our security requirements".
> /../ If the operating system is an Android variant (also called a 'custom ROM'), such as LineageOS or Pixel Experience, then the wero app can’t be installed for security reasons.
The thing is, with most banks you aren't even allowed to use the Wero app that has this play integrity restriction. The banks integrate Wero directly into their own apps. So its mostly up to your bank.
It does not say anything about remote attestation, only rooted/unlocked phones. Most likely it works fine if you run GrapheneOS with a locked bootloader.
Many European banking apps work on degoogled Android like GrapheneOS or /e/OS fine, as long as you have locked the bootloader and USB debugging disabled.
Oh, awesome, thanks. For someone like me who does not own a phone, this is valuable information. Now I know that I don't have to waste my time looking into this.
This is not a wallet (the name is a bit confusing). Wero (like iDEAL, which it is partly based on), is an online payment system directly backed by your bank account. This is an app that uses the Wero system for doing P2P payments (like Tikkie in The Netherlands).
Most likely, Wero (like iDEAL) will also support alternative apps for P2P payments.
Also, Wero will support in-store payments in the future, making Google Pay/Apple Pay unnecessary [1] unnecessary, which is a big win.
[1] Strictly spoken it's unnecessary now as well, but then each bank needs to implement its own NFC app and most simply opt foor Google/Apple Pay.
It can be both, the plumbing is straight forward, simply a matter of will to implement. UPI in India, Pix in Brazil, FedNow in the US, etc. Trimmings are things like paying via QR code and alias support (phone, email IDs). Pix had native alias support, Wero is alias support on top of SEPA Instant payment rails (with a ~ten second settlement SLA).
This gets you to utility cost recovery fee structures and sovereignty over your payment infra, versus other countries controlling your value transfer capabilities.
This is a regulatory thing, devices used for instant payments should be somehow attested and be authenticated (or be a physical device the bank issued e.g your card).
It’s a difficult thing, we don’t want to have to force smartphone choices but the number of users without one these devices is so vanishingly small it’s very difficult to change the legislation in order to support them too.
I think the happy middle ground is making this system also work with bank issued cards.
I don't see, why a smartphone plus NFC enabled token device wouldn't work within the regulation, we should go that way, (or any way decoupling Google & Co. from it) because we should be prepared for US companies to be forced to act unreasonably by an unreasonable leader.
I agree, I’m not saying it’s totally correct or there aren’t answers, but those are the current rules at least in my bank.
Instant payments bypass typical surveillance and fraud systems and so need some kind of authentication, if you don’t want to 2fa every time you’re at the checkout then the application has to have been previously authenticated (e.g setup with some kinda TAN from your bank) and execute on an attested device. We can def extend attestation to other devices (e.g is the kernel modified, does the app have reasonable version and checksums etc) but again, who is gonna fund that for 10 users?
edit: We have a long road to go before this stuff gets better, I think we should be happy at each step instead of really wishing we were already at the finish.
There's technical possibility and then real world practicality.
For the same reason, a pure WebAuthn flow in a compliant browser could technically implement secure payment confirmation mandated by the DSP, but afaik no bank does that, and the W3C is still working on the spec.
Our governments can't even manage not to depend on Microsoft/Google/AWS (and Palantir, the US military industrial complex, Israel, ...), our banks are regularly under the fire of extraterritorial bullshit due to the USD dependence.
Being worried about consumer devices and their OS is cute, but it's missing the forest for the trees.
This is not true. Many European bank apps allow instant payments and work without Google's remote attestation. They typically require a locked bootloader. I am in The Netherlands, use GrapheneOS and do instant payments all the time.
(GrapheneOS does support remote attestation, but the app needs to add their verified boot key fingerprints.)
This is great news if it’s true, these regulations are so hazy it’s maddening. Even tho I’m being downvoted I am actually on the side of removing these barriers I was just sharing what I was made to understand by my bank. shrug
All Dutch banks for example? I do instant online payments and P2P payments all the time with a degoogled phone. My VISA credit card app (ICS) also works fine.
I can't pick up a slab of beer at Albert Heijn because it requires Google Pay. But some banks (I think Rabobank) have their own NFC app and then it works fine.
But instant online iDEAL payments etc. work fine. Person to person payments using Tikkie/betaalverzoek as wel.
Put differently, I never use my bank's web interface, only the phone app.
That’s authenticated and 2fa’d, so it doesn’t have the same use case as a tap to pay system, though. I’m not defending these choices, but there is a reality here.
> we don’t want to have to force smartphone choices but the number of users without one these devices is so vanishingly small
You are missing the point. The issue is that once the "vanishingly small" number of alternatives disappears, users will be completely trapped, and Google and Apple will then free to abuse that position of power (they already do). Worse, since power is centralized, it is very easy for government interference to take place, and we already see that with things such as identity and age verification requirements. It is the possibility of competition that matters more than actual competition.
Because we don’t need it. The US banking system for example is fairly archaic. Where I live, paper checks went extinct about 30 years ago. Now with SEPA, bank transfers are cheap (cents), fast (seconds) and easy (IBAN). If our banking system would not be as convenient, I’m pretty sure something like PayPal would have been very popular.
Can anyone explain me exactly why it is a suitable alternative to VISA and Mastercard (and why people were waiting for it). I am trying to understand the full picture here, so multiple things come to my mind.
First, SEPA instant payments already exist and are really instant up to a certain amount, and I am guessing that Wero builds on top of that a sort of identity layer, to sidestep the whole IBAN thing. But it is likely more than a SEPA alias, since it was supposedly hard to set-up.
Second, VISA and Mastercard are worldwide payment networks (or rather, they each operate payment networks with various names?). But I am failing to grasp what's hard to reproduce here too. I heard that in Europe there were only a few national alternatives, like Carte Bancaire or Girocard, but why? Is it just because banks can't agree on the design of an alternate network? But all the fees associated with using VISA or Mastercard should be a big enough incentive to push something else. (basically what's a payment network?)
And lastly, why are all the new (free) digital banks (néobanques as we call them here) relying on either Mastercard or VISA and never on Carte Bancaire for example, while it generally offers lower processing fees (and that they can be cobranded).
I think I am missing a lot of context, and I asked LLMs a while ago about these but themselves don't really explain what is the infrastructure needed to operate such a network.
Well, Visa and Mastercard are expensive and suck. The shop always has to pay them some percentage for a transaction. That adds up.
For decades, european countries like Netherlands or German had cheaper alternatives, e.g. in Germany the old "EC Card" and now "girocard". That costs a shop just a fixed amount of cent... and a very low amount.
(That is BTW one of THE reasons why US travellers won't see "Credit cards accepted" in every store ... our alternatives are just cheaper, so the market decided)
Also, Visa and Mastercard as US companies. So they are sniffing on all european transactions.
And it happened more than once that US companies tried to execute bullshit US laws in Europe. Example: there was once an german online shop that sold cuban cigars. Eventually the US website that hosted the shop said "Oh, that's not allowed" --- despite it perfectly legal by german law. And they didn't just delete this cuban cigars, they disabled the whole shop, with IIRC 20000 EUR positive balance. And the shop owner didn't even get his money, since their customer service sucked and was only automated response and untrained indian call center clerks.
So no, we cannot really depend on US services. They are expensive, they customer service sucks, they are sniffing either directly or let the NSA sniff everything.
And, bank-wise the USA seems to be some decades back (not online-bank-wise!). I mean, they still have pay cheques? Not direct bank transfers? Shudder. No wonder that, if they have no alternatives, they think everything must be Visa or Mastercard operated.
You're in the Netherlands, and you are going to buy something in an on-line store. Steam perhaps, or any Dutch retailer.
You put the game in your Steam cart, and go to pay. You select Ideal (which Steam provides as an option), you pick your bank, and you follow the on-screen instructions (but you probably do that pretty much automatically). Usually that means scanning a QR code with your bank app on your smartphone where you confirm the amount and recipient, but you can use a physical card reader with your debit card for an OTP to use as well and do it in your bank's online environment in the browser.
That process is what the whole of Europe wants (Wero builds on the Dutch Ideal). It is stupid simple, and once you've used it you don't want to deal with credit cards and bank transfers for buying a thing on-line any more.
That's all there is to it. There is a whole country which already does this, and it works so well everyone wants it. No major US companies needed (big plus these days), and no parasites like Klarna either. Just an easy way to pay a shop using your bank account, just like you use a debit card in physical stores do the same.
That process is what the whole of Europe wants (Wero builds on the Dutch Ideal). It is stupid simple, and once you've used it you don't want to deal with credit cards and bank transfers for buying a thing on-line any more.
Can confirm. I almost never pay by card because iDEAL is simply much smoother and even many Shopify/Stripe shops offer it as a payment option nowadays. Getting this on all European webshops, for P2P payments (like Tikkie in The Netherlands), and in-store payments is just fantastic.
> Usually that means scanning a QR code with your bank app on your smartphone where you confirm the amount and recipient, but you can use a physical card reader with your debit card for an OTP
This seems to be mobile-centric system that essentially requires a cell phone, and probably one blessed by Google or Apple. The app will probably leak a huge amount of meta data, far more than a credit card (especially a privacy-oriented prepaid one). This kind of "solution" is dead on arrival as far as I am concerned.
How is that better than a card payment? Cards are accepted by far more merchants, have dispute rights, are inexpensive (in Europe) to process, supported by Apple & Google Pay, superior checkout experience, etc.
I've never used their dispute rights, and I don't think that holds much value in Europe. At least in Germany a contract is a contract, if I claw back the payment companies will just start the collections process. A process that has teeth and generally will recover the money from me, worst case by garnishing wages.
On the other hand Visa and MasterCard are not neutral actors. They have used their market power in the past to pressure merchants to change according to American moral values. And with the current administration I have little faith that this will stay at moral values
1. Credit cards are not that common. People usually have debit cards. Those can sometimes be used online but they're not widely accepted. My debit card is Maestro, which is not accepted in many places.
2. Even with my Mastercard credit card, the process is still inconvenient. For small purchases, it's fine. But for larger ones, there is an annoying second factor authentication, I have to enter a special password, and the wait to receive an SMS.
3. Visa and Mastercard fees. Most of the time these are paid by the merchant. But sometimes the customer has to pay more if the payment method is credit card. Some places don't accept these at all.
In general iDEAL is simple, secure and convenient. Not only to pay online, but also for example for splitting a bill with friends. I'm very happy to see this being adopted more widely in Europe.
The whole flow is so much better than card purchases, where you have to enter all the data (or see your password manager's autofill fail) and then you have to go to your credit card provider's app to acknowledge the transaction.
Cards are accepted by far more merchants,
The vast majority of Dutch online transactions are done because pretty much every Dutch online shop supports it. Also many international shops through Shopify and Stripe. Many Dutch online shops do not support credit card payments. So iDEAL is the far lower friction option here. And there is no American company in between (at least for most national payments). It's great to see this system, that served us two decades by now finally get rolled out across Europe. They tried it before in the early 2010s, but the non-Dutch banks were fighting turf wars.
Cards are reliant on US companies -> Visa / Mastercard. The European Payment Initiative wants to remove reliance on the US. Perhaps there can be a ECB payment rail/network that would support cardlike payments too.
You should not be distracted by the fact that SEPA Instant payments are used as the clearing mechanism. The Wero (EPI) backend IS the payment network and provides the messaging layer between the customer's bank and the merchant. Payment processors can interface with Wero and provide payment services for merchants in much the same way as they offer credit card payments.
I think they are hoping wero would one day work in countries worldwide as competition to visa/mastercard.
EU local payments already work instantly and feeless in many countries through SEPA. Lot of these countries are already on trajectory to gradually get off visa/mastercard for domestic payments as every ecommerce store pushes SEPA as the default payment to save on fees.
Sepa-inst requires 10 seconds or less end to end, this isn’t as easy as it sounds to implement, but we are kind of there.
The problem is how do you initiate this payment? Some kind of scannable code or nfc interaction seems to be the missing part. I’d also like to see some kind of physical card also work for those who don’t want or are unable to have an attestable device with them.
The merchant/processor/issuer network with all the correct incentives is (nearly) impossible to replicate. Visa and Mastercard work more or less, perfectly.
The only entities that need/want "instant, non-recourse payments" are fraudsters.
In the EU countries with local instant bank payments schemes they are much more popular with consumers than credit cards when paying attrusted merchants, who in turn pay around a quarter in fees of what they'd have to pay for cards. No need for expensive credit cards schemes in Europe any more.
For the neobanks I think it's very easy to explain: Their customers need Visa or Mastercard. No Visa/Mastercard? No retail customers. It's as simple as that. Any other payment scheme is a bonus thing that can be put on the backlog.
Taler is cool but different. Wero is about moving money from your bank account to someone else’s bank account using a phone number to identify the recipient.
It is very similar to many other mobile money systems. What make it different is that it is pan European
Taler is about moving money without necessarily using a bank account
> The cooperation builds on the success of existing solutions, connecting them via a central hub to create a truly pan-European experience for cross-border payments.
> European consumers will continue using their current preferred solution, now with broader European reach
> The cooperation is based on a central interoperability hub, operated by a future central entity jointly established by the partners.
So it is unlikely that Wero will be the single solution for entire Europe. Instead it is one of many solutions that hopefully will interoperate in the future. But we are still in the MoU phase only, so lets see what happens...
I think it's important to note—which isn't mentioned on their website at all, stupidly enough—that wero has two parts. The p2p payment, that you can see in the parent article. And the e-commerce functionality, which is based on the dutch iDeal. See https://sowieso.wero-wallet.eu/nl-en/
Kinda odd that their marketing does nothing to clarify this...
It disgusts me that there's no consumer protection law against 'if you want to use our service you must have an Android or iPhone'. Blue Bikes (rental bicycles) also have this problem and there it's possibly even worse because they used to have a card.
It’s not like this issue had been solved like… what… 15 freaking years ago in China.
The fact that this is shown as a « big step forward » is a a great example of how much the EU is lagging behind. It’s honestly quite sad.
Anyway, let’s wait and see, I already used Wero, it works OK, I don’t really get what the difference is between this and instant bank transfers but again, let’s wait and see.
would be cool if they'd also only be using Europe tools for hosting but so far I've seen Atlassian Statuspage, Zendesk, Google Tag Manager, HubSpot, Matomo Cloud (which uses AWS), Digital Ocean and Google Ads.
The problems with Wero is that it needs a linked phone number and nobody can answer what happens if you link two bank accounts from different banks to the same phone number (is this even supported? Why do I NEED to link my phone number?). Also, every bank needs to manually support Wero and when you want to pay online you need to scan a QR code with your phone (yes even on your desktop) and approve it inside your banking app which makes it way slower than just using PayPal or Google/Apple Pay. It's astounding how EU bureaucrats came up with "PayPal but worse" over 25 years after PayPal was founded.
EU bureaucrats have nothing to do with this. They are pushing the Digital Euro instead.
Wero is an initiative from a group of European banks united in EPI (European Payment Initiative). The tech is partially based on the Dutch iDEAL (which EPI acquired a few years ago).
iDEAL has been around in The Netherlands for 20 years and is used for most Dutch online payments (also supported by Shopify and Stripe) and P2P payments through Tikkie/betaalverzoek. The whole system is really nice and smooth and definitely much nicer than PayPal in many ways. Almost no online stores use Paypal here because iDEAL works so well.
Given this history and the iDEAL people working there, I'm sure Wero will be fine after a few iterations.
A phone number (or email) is not strictly necessary [1]. Some banks do indeed require it for the Wero account setup, which in my opinion is a mistake. You only need the additional identifiers if you want to look up other Wero users using your phone's address book to send money P2P without using a QR code.
It's not possible to register the same phone number (or email) at two banks simultaneously. The last registration wins and the associated bank account will switch on the backend when you try this.
Also, EU bureaucrats have little to do with it. Wero is the third attempt by a subset of private European banks to establish a new pan-European payment network.
Here where I live a similar thing exists for like 10 years already, and if the recepient has 2 bank accounts from different banks, then the banking app lets you choose which bank you want to send the money to. They also show the recipient's first and middle names (only the first letter of the last name is shown) to make sure you're sending money to the right person.
And I've always wondered, isn't it kind of unsafe, if someone gets my number, they can learn where I store my money and what my name is.
Dunno about the desktop, but if you're on a phone, there's often a button "open in the bank app". I actually like that you need to approve it in the banking app, it's like a single source of truth no one else but me has access to. Dunno why it would be "way slower", it's just an additional click?
phone number was a poor choice, agreed. Identifier should just be some guid attached to your bank account of choice and you get one for every device / card.
I don’t imagine that’s so very hard to implement later though.
Every once in a while, I check it out, and every time I am confused or disappointed.
Don't we already have SEPA transfers? What benefits would this add? Why are they completely unable to pitch it to someone who's curious and receptive to the idea?
From what I've gathered, they've decided to make this completely unusable without a Google- or Apple-approved smartphone. Horrible! Are individual banks even allowed to make that an option for clients? Though even if they are, I doubt any will.
I would LOVE a PayPal alternative, but this is just not it.
--
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.
Your link is broken for me.
From https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599098295... it seems they don't even support phones with developer settings turned on, much less custom ROMs, rooted or jaibroken phones.
It works on a Pixel 6a with GrapheneOS.
If it works, it's by happenstance not officially. According to the link above (official FAQ):
> If the operating system is an Android variant (also called a 'custom ROM'), such as LineageOS or Pixel Experience, then the wero app can’t be installed for security reasons.
As long as it works on a degoogled Android phone I'm fine with it. Maybe someone in the supported countries with an GraphenOS or /e/OS phone can confirm?
Edit: for some banks it will just forward to the bank's app. So most likely it works as long as your bank supports degoogled Android, similar to how iDEAL + Tikkie works on degoogled Android with most Dutch banks.
I should've been clearer - by Google-approved, I meant that your device has to pass Google's remote attestation scheme. From https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599098295...:
> I’m seeing this error message: "Your device does not meet our security requirements".
> /../ If the operating system is an Android variant (also called a 'custom ROM'), such as LineageOS or Pixel Experience, then the wero app can’t be installed for security reasons.
The thing is, with most banks you aren't even allowed to use the Wero app that has this play integrity restriction. The banks integrate Wero directly into their own apps. So its mostly up to your bank.
It does not say anything about remote attestation, only rooted/unlocked phones. Most likely it works fine if you run GrapheneOS with a locked bootloader.
Many European banking apps work on degoogled Android like GrapheneOS or /e/OS fine, as long as you have locked the bootloader and USB debugging disabled.
Oh, awesome, thanks. For someone like me who does not own a phone, this is valuable information. Now I know that I don't have to waste my time looking into this.
I'm using my bank's app on a fully de-googlised Lineageos (no MicroG) and Wero works.
But with another bank, when I had to install the Wero app, it didn't work at all.
That link is broken for me. I would like clarity if they support AOSP devices. That would be a meaningful departure from the status quo.
This one works for me https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599074240...
Ah, so this EU wallet is only usable after US companies bless my device? Outstanding move!
This is not a wallet (the name is a bit confusing). Wero (like iDEAL, which it is partly based on), is an online payment system directly backed by your bank account. This is an app that uses the Wero system for doing P2P payments (like Tikkie in The Netherlands).
Most likely, Wero (like iDEAL) will also support alternative apps for P2P payments.
Also, Wero will support in-store payments in the future, making Google Pay/Apple Pay unnecessary [1] unnecessary, which is a big win.
[1] Strictly spoken it's unnecessary now as well, but then each bank needs to implement its own NFC app and most simply opt foor Google/Apple Pay.
I think this is more about fees than sovereignty.
It can be both, the plumbing is straight forward, simply a matter of will to implement. UPI in India, Pix in Brazil, FedNow in the US, etc. Trimmings are things like paying via QR code and alias support (phone, email IDs). Pix had native alias support, Wero is alias support on top of SEPA Instant payment rails (with a ~ten second settlement SLA).
This gets you to utility cost recovery fee structures and sovereignty over your payment infra, versus other countries controlling your value transfer capabilities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_payment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/retail/instant_payments/html/...
This is a regulatory thing, devices used for instant payments should be somehow attested and be authenticated (or be a physical device the bank issued e.g your card).
It’s a difficult thing, we don’t want to have to force smartphone choices but the number of users without one these devices is so vanishingly small it’s very difficult to change the legislation in order to support them too.
I think the happy middle ground is making this system also work with bank issued cards.
I don't see, why a smartphone plus NFC enabled token device wouldn't work within the regulation, we should go that way, (or any way decoupling Google & Co. from it) because we should be prepared for US companies to be forced to act unreasonably by an unreasonable leader.
I agree, I’m not saying it’s totally correct or there aren’t answers, but those are the current rules at least in my bank.
Instant payments bypass typical surveillance and fraud systems and so need some kind of authentication, if you don’t want to 2fa every time you’re at the checkout then the application has to have been previously authenticated (e.g setup with some kinda TAN from your bank) and execute on an attested device. We can def extend attestation to other devices (e.g is the kernel modified, does the app have reasonable version and checksums etc) but again, who is gonna fund that for 10 users?
edit: We have a long road to go before this stuff gets better, I think we should be happy at each step instead of really wishing we were already at the finish.
There's technical possibility and then real world practicality.
For the same reason, a pure WebAuthn flow in a compliant browser could technically implement secure payment confirmation mandated by the DSP, but afaik no bank does that, and the W3C is still working on the spec.
Our governments can't even manage not to depend on Microsoft/Google/AWS (and Palantir, the US military industrial complex, Israel, ...), our banks are regularly under the fire of extraterritorial bullshit due to the USD dependence.
Being worried about consumer devices and their OS is cute, but it's missing the forest for the trees.
This is not true. Many European bank apps allow instant payments and work without Google's remote attestation. They typically require a locked bootloader. I am in The Netherlands, use GrapheneOS and do instant payments all the time.
(GrapheneOS does support remote attestation, but the app needs to add their verified boot key fingerprints.)
Which bank? I work in this space for a large european bank and we wouldn’t be able to do this.
My Volksbank app here in Germany just wants a locked boatloads and no root. Works fine with microg. It's the reason I will never move!
Though the Sparkasse is the same actually, unsure about the other german banks
This is great news if it’s true, these regulations are so hazy it’s maddening. Even tho I’m being downvoted I am actually on the side of removing these barriers I was just sharing what I was made to understand by my bank. shrug
All Dutch banks for example? I do instant online payments and P2P payments all the time with a degoogled phone. My VISA credit card app (ICS) also works fine.
You mean via your banks web interface? Or via some tap to pay interface?
What i mean is can you use this to pick up a slab of beer in albert hein, or just to transfer some cash to a friend or such?
I can't pick up a slab of beer at Albert Heijn because it requires Google Pay. But some banks (I think Rabobank) have their own NFC app and then it works fine.
But instant online iDEAL payments etc. work fine. Person to person payments using Tikkie/betaalverzoek as wel.
Put differently, I never use my bank's web interface, only the phone app.
Then I'll unfortunately have to continue paying the PayPal tax - apparently they have no issues running in any browser of my choice.
> I think the happy middle ground is making this system also work with bank issued cards.
That wouldn't let me pay online.
That’s authenticated and 2fa’d, so it doesn’t have the same use case as a tap to pay system, though. I’m not defending these choices, but there is a reality here.
> we don’t want to have to force smartphone choices but the number of users without one these devices is so vanishingly small
You are missing the point. The issue is that once the "vanishingly small" number of alternatives disappears, users will be completely trapped, and Google and Apple will then free to abuse that position of power (they already do). Worse, since power is centralized, it is very easy for government interference to take place, and we already see that with things such as identity and age verification requirements. It is the possibility of competition that matters more than actual competition.
Aren’t your problems solved by carrying a bit of plastic issues by your bank? Why isn’t that enough?
This "digital wallet" is precisely touted as an alternative to carrying plastic.
We really should try to understand your mentality, if only to understand why after 27 years the EU still doesn't have a PayPal alternative.
Because we don’t need it. The US banking system for example is fairly archaic. Where I live, paper checks went extinct about 30 years ago. Now with SEPA, bank transfers are cheap (cents), fast (seconds) and easy (IBAN). If our banking system would not be as convenient, I’m pretty sure something like PayPal would have been very popular.
Can anyone explain me exactly why it is a suitable alternative to VISA and Mastercard (and why people were waiting for it). I am trying to understand the full picture here, so multiple things come to my mind.
First, SEPA instant payments already exist and are really instant up to a certain amount, and I am guessing that Wero builds on top of that a sort of identity layer, to sidestep the whole IBAN thing. But it is likely more than a SEPA alias, since it was supposedly hard to set-up.
Second, VISA and Mastercard are worldwide payment networks (or rather, they each operate payment networks with various names?). But I am failing to grasp what's hard to reproduce here too. I heard that in Europe there were only a few national alternatives, like Carte Bancaire or Girocard, but why? Is it just because banks can't agree on the design of an alternate network? But all the fees associated with using VISA or Mastercard should be a big enough incentive to push something else. (basically what's a payment network?)
And lastly, why are all the new (free) digital banks (néobanques as we call them here) relying on either Mastercard or VISA and never on Carte Bancaire for example, while it generally offers lower processing fees (and that they can be cobranded).
I think I am missing a lot of context, and I asked LLMs a while ago about these but themselves don't really explain what is the infrastructure needed to operate such a network.
Well, Visa and Mastercard are expensive and suck. The shop always has to pay them some percentage for a transaction. That adds up.
For decades, european countries like Netherlands or German had cheaper alternatives, e.g. in Germany the old "EC Card" and now "girocard". That costs a shop just a fixed amount of cent... and a very low amount.
(That is BTW one of THE reasons why US travellers won't see "Credit cards accepted" in every store ... our alternatives are just cheaper, so the market decided)
Also, Visa and Mastercard as US companies. So they are sniffing on all european transactions.
And it happened more than once that US companies tried to execute bullshit US laws in Europe. Example: there was once an german online shop that sold cuban cigars. Eventually the US website that hosted the shop said "Oh, that's not allowed" --- despite it perfectly legal by german law. And they didn't just delete this cuban cigars, they disabled the whole shop, with IIRC 20000 EUR positive balance. And the shop owner didn't even get his money, since their customer service sucked and was only automated response and untrained indian call center clerks.
So no, we cannot really depend on US services. They are expensive, they customer service sucks, they are sniffing either directly or let the NSA sniff everything.
And, bank-wise the USA seems to be some decades back (not online-bank-wise!). I mean, they still have pay cheques? Not direct bank transfers? Shudder. No wonder that, if they have no alternatives, they think everything must be Visa or Mastercard operated.
It's really simple.
You're in the Netherlands, and you are going to buy something in an on-line store. Steam perhaps, or any Dutch retailer.
You put the game in your Steam cart, and go to pay. You select Ideal (which Steam provides as an option), you pick your bank, and you follow the on-screen instructions (but you probably do that pretty much automatically). Usually that means scanning a QR code with your bank app on your smartphone where you confirm the amount and recipient, but you can use a physical card reader with your debit card for an OTP to use as well and do it in your bank's online environment in the browser.
That process is what the whole of Europe wants (Wero builds on the Dutch Ideal). It is stupid simple, and once you've used it you don't want to deal with credit cards and bank transfers for buying a thing on-line any more.
That's all there is to it. There is a whole country which already does this, and it works so well everyone wants it. No major US companies needed (big plus these days), and no parasites like Klarna either. Just an easy way to pay a shop using your bank account, just like you use a debit card in physical stores do the same.
That process is what the whole of Europe wants (Wero builds on the Dutch Ideal). It is stupid simple, and once you've used it you don't want to deal with credit cards and bank transfers for buying a thing on-line any more.
Can confirm. I almost never pay by card because iDEAL is simply much smoother and even many Shopify/Stripe shops offer it as a payment option nowadays. Getting this on all European webshops, for P2P payments (like Tikkie in The Netherlands), and in-store payments is just fantastic.
> Usually that means scanning a QR code with your bank app on your smartphone where you confirm the amount and recipient, but you can use a physical card reader with your debit card for an OTP
This seems to be mobile-centric system that essentially requires a cell phone, and probably one blessed by Google or Apple. The app will probably leak a huge amount of meta data, far more than a credit card (especially a privacy-oriented prepaid one). This kind of "solution" is dead on arrival as far as I am concerned.
Did you miss the whole part where op talks about using your physical card as an alternative?
How is that better than a card payment? Cards are accepted by far more merchants, have dispute rights, are inexpensive (in Europe) to process, supported by Apple & Google Pay, superior checkout experience, etc.
I've never used their dispute rights, and I don't think that holds much value in Europe. At least in Germany a contract is a contract, if I claw back the payment companies will just start the collections process. A process that has teeth and generally will recover the money from me, worst case by garnishing wages.
On the other hand Visa and MasterCard are not neutral actors. They have used their market power in the past to pressure merchants to change according to American moral values. And with the current administration I have little faith that this will stay at moral values
1. Credit cards are not that common. People usually have debit cards. Those can sometimes be used online but they're not widely accepted. My debit card is Maestro, which is not accepted in many places.
2. Even with my Mastercard credit card, the process is still inconvenient. For small purchases, it's fine. But for larger ones, there is an annoying second factor authentication, I have to enter a special password, and the wait to receive an SMS.
3. Visa and Mastercard fees. Most of the time these are paid by the merchant. But sometimes the customer has to pay more if the payment method is credit card. Some places don't accept these at all.
In general iDEAL is simple, secure and convenient. Not only to pay online, but also for example for splitting a bill with friends. I'm very happy to see this being adopted more widely in Europe.
The whole flow is so much better than card purchases, where you have to enter all the data (or see your password manager's autofill fail) and then you have to go to your credit card provider's app to acknowledge the transaction.
Cards are accepted by far more merchants,
The vast majority of Dutch online transactions are done because pretty much every Dutch online shop supports it. Also many international shops through Shopify and Stripe. Many Dutch online shops do not support credit card payments. So iDEAL is the far lower friction option here. And there is no American company in between (at least for most national payments). It's great to see this system, that served us two decades by now finally get rolled out across Europe. They tried it before in the early 2010s, but the non-Dutch banks were fighting turf wars.
Cards are reliant on US companies -> Visa / Mastercard. The European Payment Initiative wants to remove reliance on the US. Perhaps there can be a ECB payment rail/network that would support cardlike payments too.
So it's mainly a nationalism thing? Is that enough to displace the superior option?
I don't see where card schemes are inherently superior in the age of NFC payments.
There are huge countries (China, India, Brazil, ...) where people moved from cash to mobile payments.
Europe has always been in the forefront of this space, Swish exists since 2012, it's about time we get a pan-European solution.
You should not be distracted by the fact that SEPA Instant payments are used as the clearing mechanism. The Wero (EPI) backend IS the payment network and provides the messaging layer between the customer's bank and the merchant. Payment processors can interface with Wero and provide payment services for merchants in much the same way as they offer credit card payments.
Industry observer Dwayne Gefferie took a stab at it (although I'm still highly skeptical): https://dwaynegefferie.substack.com/p/epi-european-payments-...
I think they are hoping wero would one day work in countries worldwide as competition to visa/mastercard.
EU local payments already work instantly and feeless in many countries through SEPA. Lot of these countries are already on trajectory to gradually get off visa/mastercard for domestic payments as every ecommerce store pushes SEPA as the default payment to save on fees.
There's no need for a worldwide solution, federation and interoperability between major schemes are enough.
The same way AliPay can be used in most Asian countries already, we can imagine a world where EPI, UPI, Pix and so on interoperate smoothly.
I assume Visa and MC will try to remain walled off as the US are a big and slow mover in this space, until they'll need to open up as well.
Note: payments (unlike transfers) are never really zero fees, for good reasons.
Sepa-inst requires 10 seconds or less end to end, this isn’t as easy as it sounds to implement, but we are kind of there.
The problem is how do you initiate this payment? Some kind of scannable code or nfc interaction seems to be the missing part. I’d also like to see some kind of physical card also work for those who don’t want or are unable to have an attestable device with them.
The merchant/processor/issuer network with all the correct incentives is (nearly) impossible to replicate. Visa and Mastercard work more or less, perfectly.
The only entities that need/want "instant, non-recourse payments" are fraudsters.
In the EU countries with local instant bank payments schemes they are much more popular with consumers than credit cards when paying attrusted merchants, who in turn pay around a quarter in fees of what they'd have to pay for cards. No need for expensive credit cards schemes in Europe any more.
For the neobanks I think it's very easy to explain: Their customers need Visa or Mastercard. No Visa/Mastercard? No retail customers. It's as simple as that. Any other payment scheme is a bonus thing that can be put on the backlog.
There is Taler already https://www.taler.net/
Taler is cool but different. Wero is about moving money from your bank account to someone else’s bank account using a phone number to identify the recipient.
It is very similar to many other mobile money systems. What make it different is that it is pan European
Taler is about moving money without necessarily using a bank account
That is a (much better) ecosystem that someone must host and provide.
Holefully more providers will pop up in the years to come.
This is like someone posting a link to Venmo and you saying "There is CashApp already"
Isn't Venmo some nasty shit that by default exposes all of your transactions publicly to your "friends"?
? Venmo is useless for many of us because it is limited to the US
I think this press release adds much needed context: https://epicompany.eu/media-insights/bancomat-bizum-epi-sibs...
Especially these parts:
> The cooperation builds on the success of existing solutions, connecting them via a central hub to create a truly pan-European experience for cross-border payments.
> European consumers will continue using their current preferred solution, now with broader European reach
> The cooperation is based on a central interoperability hub, operated by a future central entity jointly established by the partners.
So it is unlikely that Wero will be the single solution for entire Europe. Instead it is one of many solutions that hopefully will interoperate in the future. But we are still in the MoU phase only, so lets see what happens...
Europe? It's available only in Germany, Belgium and France. That are IN Europe but are not THE Europe.
https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/37991694065...
I hope we'll get there soon.
I think it's important to note—which isn't mentioned on their website at all, stupidly enough—that wero has two parts. The p2p payment, that you can see in the parent article. And the e-commerce functionality, which is based on the dutch iDeal. See https://sowieso.wero-wallet.eu/nl-en/
Kinda odd that their marketing does nothing to clarify this...
At first glance this seems similar to swish, but for a different part of Europe. Is it?
I wonder if there will be interoperability between them, that would be pretty sweet
Fyi, Wero only supports three countries: Belgium, France, and Germany.
Netherlands and Luxemburg joining soon, along with what I believe is Austria's biggest bank. But yes, hardly a pan-European project.
With NL that’s fully 40% of the population of the eu states.
It’s not great, but it’s not bad either.
Already quite much if we add the Netherlands, yes :)
wrong, also the netherlands
Iirc many countries decided to not participate in this. Does anyone know why?
It disgusts me that there's no consumer protection law against 'if you want to use our service you must have an Android or iPhone'. Blue Bikes (rental bicycles) also have this problem and there it's possibly even worse because they used to have a card.
It’s not like this issue had been solved like… what… 15 freaking years ago in China.
The fact that this is shown as a « big step forward » is a a great example of how much the EU is lagging behind. It’s honestly quite sad.
Anyway, let’s wait and see, I already used Wero, it works OK, I don’t really get what the difference is between this and instant bank transfers but again, let’s wait and see.
Hey don't blame Europe, they are hardly an expert on « ̶b̶i̶g̶ ̶s̶t̶e̶p̶ ̶great leaps forward »
I really hope we can get Wero cards at some point. I don't like my ability to pay for things to depend on my phone's battery.
Speaking of payment methods, anyone else noticed that Pcbway stopped accepting credit cards? What is going on?
would be cool if they'd also only be using Europe tools for hosting but so far I've seen Atlassian Statuspage, Zendesk, Google Tag Manager, HubSpot, Matomo Cloud (which uses AWS), Digital Ocean and Google Ads.
The problems with Wero is that it needs a linked phone number and nobody can answer what happens if you link two bank accounts from different banks to the same phone number (is this even supported? Why do I NEED to link my phone number?). Also, every bank needs to manually support Wero and when you want to pay online you need to scan a QR code with your phone (yes even on your desktop) and approve it inside your banking app which makes it way slower than just using PayPal or Google/Apple Pay. It's astounding how EU bureaucrats came up with "PayPal but worse" over 25 years after PayPal was founded.
EU bureaucrats have nothing to do with this. They are pushing the Digital Euro instead.
Wero is an initiative from a group of European banks united in EPI (European Payment Initiative). The tech is partially based on the Dutch iDEAL (which EPI acquired a few years ago).
iDEAL has been around in The Netherlands for 20 years and is used for most Dutch online payments (also supported by Shopify and Stripe) and P2P payments through Tikkie/betaalverzoek. The whole system is really nice and smooth and definitely much nicer than PayPal in many ways. Almost no online stores use Paypal here because iDEAL works so well.
Given this history and the iDEAL people working there, I'm sure Wero will be fine after a few iterations.
A phone number (or email) is not strictly necessary [1]. Some banks do indeed require it for the Wero account setup, which in my opinion is a mistake. You only need the additional identifiers if you want to look up other Wero users using your phone's address book to send money P2P without using a QR code.
It's not possible to register the same phone number (or email) at two banks simultaneously. The last registration wins and the associated bank account will switch on the backend when you try this.
Also, EU bureaucrats have little to do with it. Wero is the third attempt by a subset of private European banks to establish a new pan-European payment network.
[1] https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599201237...
Here where I live a similar thing exists for like 10 years already, and if the recepient has 2 bank accounts from different banks, then the banking app lets you choose which bank you want to send the money to. They also show the recipient's first and middle names (only the first letter of the last name is shown) to make sure you're sending money to the right person.
And I've always wondered, isn't it kind of unsafe, if someone gets my number, they can learn where I store my money and what my name is.
Dunno about the desktop, but if you're on a phone, there's often a button "open in the bank app". I actually like that you need to approve it in the banking app, it's like a single source of truth no one else but me has access to. Dunno why it would be "way slower", it's just an additional click?
For me, linking the phone number was optional, I had to choose either phone and/or email.
phone number was a poor choice, agreed. Identifier should just be some guid attached to your bank account of choice and you get one for every device / card.
I don’t imagine that’s so very hard to implement later though.
I wish you the best of luck! Let me know when it works in all the countries where VISA is available so I can switch to this solution!
Every once in a while, I check it out, and every time I am confused or disappointed.
Don't we already have SEPA transfers? What benefits would this add? Why are they completely unable to pitch it to someone who's curious and receptive to the idea?
P2P transfers are just a convenient feature, using SCT Inst behind the scenes.
Pan-European payments are the bigger deal.
Related:
https://werotracker.eu/
Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46958399 - February 2026 (1020 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46963089 (Wero subthread)
Wero Wallet has been posted half a year ago as well but 1 comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44683739
That is what it's all about. Europe has realised it is dependent on potentially hostile U.S owned payment infrastructure.
Made in Europe, requires a smartphone controlled by US corporations violating DSA laws.. great.