As an American, please do. If you start using other platforms, that will loosen Visa and MasterCard’s hold everywhere, and I unfortunately don’t see America doing shit about it ourselves, so if you start, we might also be able to.
It would be nice if the banks stopped to trying to kill the local payment providers for a start.
In Denmark we’ve had Dankort since 1983, which is free for the consumers to have and use, and it’s very cheap volume based pricing for merchants.
However in the past 10 years or so, the banks have been pushing businesses and customers to use VISA/Mastercard. These are not free. The consumers pay an annual fee, and the merchants pay very high transaction fees. Yet the payment providers and banks sell the lie that they are somehow cheaper, even if they’re not. A lot of small businesses trust their banks or the payment providers to give them a good deal.
By now, it’s basically necessary for consumers to have some kind of foreign card, because so many businesses have stopped accepting Dankort. Most banks don’t even offer a “clean” Dankort anymore. They only have dual cards, where the Dankort and VISA are on the same card, which removes the choice from the consumer, since the businesses will charge the VISA. Many businesses don’t even understand what cards they accept. I always ask if they accept Dankort if the sign isn’t visible, and they think they do, but they don’t.
The story is almost the same for the instant payment systems. The banks are the ones who fucked it up, while fighting for and clinging to control of the domestic market, by confusing the customers and businesses and pushing their own limited product.
It’s long overdue for the EU to decide on a union wide solution. They’re already on it, but it’s way too slow or hindered by the political desire for this to be a private market. It really shouldn’t be.
It’s the same story all over Europe. Portugal still has Multibanco, but as far as I know no one issues a exclusively Multibanco card anymore. My first bank cards were all just Multibanco.
MBway (out digital payments) works great, but I guess in 90% of cases it’s associated to a Visa card…
No strategic vision and always that difficulty to cross borders and make alliances with neighbors.
I’m really hopefully that Wero and the Europa alliance will change that.
In the meantime it would also help if existing laws would finally be enforced. It is clear that transferring european payment data into the USA cannot be legal under GDPR. We know that all of those “privacy shield” regulations are dead under Trump. There are good reasons to suspect that Visa and Mastercard are abusing their duopoly as payment processor - and there are laws against monopoly abuses.
That’s so true!
A lot of countries have instant payments already. It is surprising there isn’t more push towards using this at least.
If you change to different centralized payment systems, they will eventually devolve into oligopolies/monopoly as well. In order to make a final solution that works forever, you need a free/open protocol like GNU_Taler
There should be some sort of free and open source payment system with no central party in charge at all.
there is GNU Taler but nobody use it right now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Taler
That’s because it’s only available in like one country, afawa.
My geography is rusty. Where is afawa?
North of afaik
This is the most American thing I have ever read.
It means as far as we’re aware.
We? How many of you are there?
Man I’ve heard afaik and afaict but never before have I heard anyone use afawa lol
How is that even possible if there’s no central party in charge‽
Because not many businesses/countries have signed up to it. We said “available” when we perhaps should have said “used” but you hopefully understand us better now.
A Canadian alternative is desperately needed too.
at least we have debit…
I have high hopes for the Digital Euro.
To have a digital payment medium that is issued by the central bank and can be exchanged without fees as a 1:1 digital equipment of cash would be amazing and go beyond just replacing American credit card providers.
What are the chances it will rely on Google’s Play integrity service?
I’m betting that anyone wirh unlocked bootloader or root access won’t be able to run this.
The EUDI Wallets have/had that as a requirement in their spec but it has been heavily criticized, no idea if it will persist though
If they do it like the Brazilian Pix, there’s a good chance it’ll be a success.
That’s something different, that’s what Wero is trying to achieve in Europe. But the Digital Euro goes well beyond what Pix does.
I’m not familiar with it, is it a private venture? If so it sounds like a different thing
Wero is private, it belongs to the EPI company. But they also have an agreement with the alliance of other payment solutions to make it all interoperable by 2027.
What’s the main difference? From the link it seems to be a cryptocurrency with the same payment features.
It would be awesome if my euros weren’t physical anymore. I don’t like being a mattress stuffer.
I just find it crazy that they cannot make this happen before 2029…
This is the most recent update report on the ECB’s ongoing work to establish a rulebook: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/timeline/profuse/shared/pdf/ecb.derdgp251030_RDG_progress_report_October_25.en.pdf?d978acf24c059027f1372a4f42155ac9
Turns out it’s a pretty massive undertaking that could tank the economy if you get it wrong, so I can see how it might take a few more years
On the one hand, can’t wait for it, on the other, hope they don’t rush it and rather get it right
Lets create a distributed fediverse alternative lol
It would get stuck in endless debate over whether John Deere should be allowed to sell things because someone from Israel bought a tractor once.
How the fuck does Europe not have it’s own payment system yet?
For one, visa and all the other US payment systems, suuuuuck. I never understood why nobody came up with something better, this just seems lazyness.
Buy hey, better late than never
The actual answer: they did.
The chip payment standard used on modern cards and terminals falls under a specification called “EMV”, which was name after the three companies that made the standard - Europay, MasterCard and Visa.
Europay merged with MasterCard in 2002.
Source: used to write software to validate and test EMV.
Also the US payment systems and the European payment systems are identical (same standard) but implemented badly in the US, that’s why it’s much faster in Europe. I have several war stories about all this.
I want to hear those war stories.
I’ll give you a fun one.
A point of clarification before I begin though - when I talk about chip cards or smart cards, I mean cards equipped with an EMV chip in them. The USA was one of the last countries to adopt this technology, only doing so roughly in the last 10 or so years. The technology has existed since the 90’s (when Europay still existed) and gets regular updates to add new encryption schemes and security gubbins, so while it’s 90’s technology, it has been updated since (Today’s cards use AES and ECC).
Prior to that adoption, the USA basically refused to use them because of the cost (Cost of cards, cost of new terminals, cost of upgrading legacy infrastructure), however they wanted all the modern conveniences like contactless payments - so those first contactless cards were equipped with simple RFID chips. You know the kind, the ones that just spew out static data. Those are the ones the Mythbusters guys investigated and were forced to not air their findings because they’re so dogshit insecure (and where the idea of someone walking down the street with a big RFID reader hoovering up credit cards comes from).
With an EMV chip card, you can’t do that. Those chips are like mini computers, they don’t just spew out static data like your card number, they do challenges and responses, they do encryption, MAC’s, the works. They really are quite secure. A transaction works in such a way that the card doesn’t trust the terminal and the terminal doesn’t trust the card, they validate each other and at any time either of them can say “Nah fuck this, I want to talk to the Bank” - this is called “going online” and if that doesn’t work, the transaction is aborted.
The point of all of this preamble is to say that it’s actually really difficult to perform fraud on a proper chip card (And again I’m talking about EMV chips, not RFID chips). Not impossible, but very difficult to the point where it’s usually not worth it.
So, to try and push adoption of the EMV standard in the USA, the big issuers (Your Mastercards and your Visas) tried to push what they termed the “Liability shift”. To put it simply, they’d say something like “If you don’t support EMV by November 15th, any fraud in your shop/bank/whatever will come out of your pockets, not ours”. Meanwhile, they charged a fee (like 2%) on every transaction to cover fraud. So as a shopkeeper, you’d lose an extra 2% (or whatever it was) on every sale, but if someone came in and bought 10 big-assed TV’s using a stolen or cloned card, you didn’t lose that money.
The problem is, no shops or businesses were going to upgrade all their equipment any time soon and certainly not before their banks could support it. Likewise the banks didn’t want to spend all that money and then tell their clients to buy all new equipment - they were afraid of losing customers because why would a customer spend thousands on a new terminal to stick with the same bank, they may as well shop around.
This weird stalemate meant that adoption was basically nill, so the issuers had to keep pushing back the liability shift over and over. Each time they got a little bit firmer, a sort of “Okay it’s now October next year before you need to adopt EMV but this time we mean it for realsies!”. This went on for YEARS and years until one day, Mastercard decided “you know what, fuck it, we’re not going to bother at all”. It turns out, those fees for protecting against fraud? They were lucrative. They made shitloads of money from it, way more than what the actual fraud was costing them.
We got told in advance that an announcement was going to go out - pushing back the liability shift “Indefinitely”, which was a real bummer for us because we were about to make shitloads of money selling testing tools and equipment to every fucker who suddenly needed to adopt EMV. Then, literally like 4 days before that announcement was due, a miracle happened - Target got hacked.
Yes, that target hack from 2013 where like 40 million credit cards were leaked onto the internet. The hack that made national news for weeks, the one that rustled the jimmies of everyone who had ever set foot inside a target. There was the biggest credit card breach on record, costing hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud and untold bad blood for tens of millions of customers and Mastercard was about to make an announcement to the effect of “Hey we’re going to cancel the one thing that would have prevented all this impending fraud from ever being able to happen”.
Yeah, they didn’t make that announcement. Instead, they put their foot down and suddenly the USA woke the fuck up and decided to finally adopt chip card technology.
(And of course they did a shit job of it, but that’s another story for another day).
I was not aware there were RFID CCs. That’s hilarious.
It’s like cheques. I’ve been in the US for half a year, I did experience getting a cheque and cashing it in an ATM.
The most ridiculous thing for someone who lives in Europe and knows SEPA.
How in the fuck did US ever get to become the world police. I would guess WW2.
You’ll notice that they don’t like to use PIN with credit cards, either.
I forgot to thank you for your war story. It’s a hell of a good one, too, so thanks.
If you ever want to share more, I’m here for it.
France still has one. It’s called CB (Carte Bleue) and is working alongside Visa and Mastercard. Notoriously, some years ago Visa was down for a day and it impacted lots of countries except France because everyone fell back to the CB Network.
Also in Italy with Bancomat. But still, wouldn’t it be nice if you could use a European card across all Europe?
This video explains it all, even if the title sounds inflammatory. But the main reason are language barriers and different regulations among European states. Also, as someone mentioned, some countries have their own payment systems but got bought by American companies, which is the same thing that happens with other European firms.
Canada seriously needs this too. While we do have Interac for debit I much prefer the safety of a credit card after several relatives have had their cards skimmed etc
Hell, if they started with a “Canada only” card I’d be 100% ok with that as my primary
How the fuck does Europe not have it’s own payment system yet?
Europe has everything of its own. But it’s almost always country-specific.
A lot of countries in Europe have widely used country-specific payment systems.
The problem is those which don’t as well as the system of one country not being usable in other European countries so it falls back to VISA or Mastercard to use your card when abroad or for online purchases from businesses based in other countries.
The advantage of Visa/Mastercard is that they work anywhere.
Europeans are rich and like to travel all over the world, so they want their cards to work everywhere too. Or order stuff online from abroad. Why bother using some local payment processor that barely works if you can just use your Visa card?
Independent payment systems only work in countries that are poor (where people don’t travel or buy stuff from abroad) and/or isolated by sanctions or internal restrictions.
the EU has the power to legislate that their version be offered in a non-discriminatory way anywhere cards with comparable fees are offered… similar to requirements to accept Euros etc
i could for sure see that having a “globally” requirement tacked onto it, arguing that if it’s implemented in Europe and is comparable or better for fees then it’s discriminatory rather than economic to not offer it elsewhere
Other countries need to implement it too
that’s what i mean about the globally requirement. there are plenty of companies that operate globally, so they could probably mandate that it’s accepted by these companies anywhere they do business
probably couldn’t mandate it for companies that don’t operate in the EU, but if it makes good business sense then they wouldn’t need to. the original mandates IMO are just needed for critical mass
Europeans are rich and like to travel all over the world,
Or just 100 km to cross the border and it’s already another country. Or if you live in a border town, it might be a short walk lol
The same like with EVs :) ceos could cut off profits without worrying about innovation
Btw in Poland we blik, as I remember 6 polish banks has equal shares and 1/7 has mastercard.
At least there some profit stays in Eu…
More banks and businesses should support Taler.
If Visa/Mastercard get replaced by another company’s centralized payment system, what prevent a large foreign corp from buying it, like they regularily do? Then we’re back to square one.
Don’t bother with Discover. They play too much with dates and fees
We’ve had Twint for over a decade in Switzerland and it’s adopted everywhere here, I have no idea why every country is cooking their own new system right now.
Pick one that works already and roll it out on the whole continent, it’s not that hard.
That’s Wero. It’s basically iDEAL in a new jacket.
Apparently owned by PEPSI 🤭
And iDEAL is really good. Everyone in the Netherlands uses it.
We’ve had it for twenty years yet no one adapted it
Other countries also have their own systems since long… MBway in Portugal is also more than a decade old.
I think every country has its own, Italy has the Bancomat network for example - but you can’t pay online with it. Then we have Satispay, which works like in China, with QR codes. Satispay is quite huge in Italy.
In NZ we’ve had electronic card payments outside of the credit card system for about 40-something years.
It just took a long time to catch up to online payments, but it’s slowly getting there.
Twint isn’t really an alternative. Swiss cards still use the visa/mastercard networks.
Twint does not use Visa or Mastercard at all, it’s connected to your bank account and works with QR codes, NFC and Phone Numbers.
That’s what i’m saying, it’s just like Wero but slightly more advanced, a way to pay without using your card.
Are you still using physical cards? I haven’t used a physical card in years since NFC has been commonplace.
Most of the time I use Apple Pay in person. However sometimes they don’t accept it online so I have to use my card.
When I said “pay without using your card” I meant online, because I’ve never used Twint in a physical shop.
Are yon never buying stuff at a local butcher shop, flower truck or at a farmers store (Hofladen)? Most of them only take cash or Twint here.
I prefer to pay w/ cash in this case. I don’t know why tbh.
Pick one that works already and roll it out on the whole continent, it’s not that hard.
Twint is working on that, just in a more federation-style way than “pick one”.
The European Mobile Payment Systems Association (EMPSA) aims for interoperability between its various members across Europe. So you can use your country’s app with the systems in other countries.
Looking at the members list, there’s Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Poland, Bulgaria, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, Romania, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Albania currently on the list.
It seems the German/Austrian, Swiss, and Italian solutions have already been made interoperable based on their milestone showcase.
Isn’t Twint still going through Visa for the in-store purchase? I remember reading it somewhere, but can’t find the source for it unfortunately, but in general whenever it is an option I prefer that over other means of payment, the only strange thing is having a separate twint app for each bank lol
Not sure if it’s a bank specific, but on my UBS account TWINT is linked to the VISA credit card account (and I don’t see any option to change that). So every transaction goes through VISA.
Mmmm on my UBS account I have it connected directly to the account itself, you can probably change that via More --> Settings --> Manage payment methods
Thanks! I’ll look into that!
Nope, Twint is connected directly to your Bank. Neither Visa, nor Mastercard nor anyone else is playing middleman. Every Swiss Bank has their own Twint App which directly connects to your account.
When you pay at a store or person to person with Twint it’s a direct transaction.
Twint is indeed directly connect to my bank … specifically to the VISA credit card account.
Because Switzerland is not in the EU and the ECB won’t let that happen. They’d rather have the yanks ripping them off than allow real competition.
Protectionism sucks.
That’s a ridiculous claim as several EU countries have their own systems, which they are trying to make interoperable between them in some cases or merge into Wero in others.
Yeah, the single market for goods is well established. The same cannot be said for services.
I’m pretty sure it’s Switzerland that doesn’t want to join the EU and not the other way around
Eh? I never said they did. They just have a very well built financial system. Unlike the EU.
Norway has BankAxept I believe. Fully homegrown, works just like visa.
Every country in Europe has its own payment system, that’s kind of the whole point
Fully dependent on Mastercard and Visa here in the Baltics for an example.
Italy has Bancomat, but still. We need a system that’s interoperable in the whole Europe.
Wero and iDeal seem promising.
Wero works great
Those are owned by the major banks, European banks, sure, but still private. Payment systems like these operate like private tax collection, levying a regressive tax on all transactions which flow through them. That’s from transaction fees which exceed the cost of processing said transaction.
I would much rather have a state-owned payment processor, which operates at cost, or is even completely funded by taxes. The extra tax revenue that would generate from increased economic activity would far outweigh its cost.
And neither has a card available, they’re more of a convenient frontend for your regular ol’ bank transfers.
