Can't we have cards for this? In Spain, for example, to use Bizum, you need either an Android/iOS smartphone (and for the Android case, as you use it from your bank's app, it would typically require some Google security assurances - so no Huawei phones allowed, for example) or logging into your bank's website and use Bizum from there, only if your bank allows you to use Bizum via web. And it's not very practical or convenient to do that when you're in a store and want to pay, in contrast to swiping your credit card.
So while I see very convenient gaining some sovereignty from American companies for these payments, I think we're losing it when we will need devices controlled by other American companies in order to use the new system.
What about being required to carry a your-own-government-controlled tracking device?
Because the US or Chine government can't harm me in Europe via the data they collect from me, But the EU authorities can if they want to, so naturally I fear them more if they were the ones hoovering my data.
What are the odds they're using this on-shore tech grab to implement their own domestic version of China's social credit score system, to easily get data on their own citizens who commit "wrong-think", without having to through the effort to twist the arm of US entities every time they want to do that?
Food for thought, but I do think we're living the last years of online anonymity, it's inevitable.
The EU commission just passed chat control to have government mandated software in every phone
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/after-years-controvers...
In some areas, sure - like GDPR.
In other areas, absolutely not - like chat control.
As another commenter pointed out, it seems as if government mandated privacy intrusion is OK, while violations by corporations are quickly shutdown. It’s like the opposite of how it works here in the US.
The Danish proposal for indiscriminate chat control did not receive enough support and was retracted last autumn. Similar proposals have been put forward regularly over the past 30 years and have so far come to nothing just as regularly.
For the conservative (and sometimes not so conservative) non-experts things like this sound like an easy win. So every new generation of politicians has to be educated about it again.
The Danish proposal for indiscriminate chat control did not receive enough support and was retracted last autumn. Similar proposals have been put forward regularly over the past 30 years and have so far come to nothing just as regularly.
Once you give people an outside boogieman(Putin, Trump, Covids, etc) or a self inflicted false flag crisis(surge in violent crime rates for example) to shake them up to their core and put the fear in them, you can then easily sell your intrusion of privacy in their lives and extension of the police state, as the necessary solution that protects them.
When you start lose control of your people because their standard of living has been going downhill for 2 decades and they realize the future prospects aren't any better so they hate you even more, you can regain control of them by rallying them up on your side in a us-versus-them type of game against external or internal aggressors that you paint as "the enemy". The media is your friend here. /s
This isn't an EU or US exclusive issue, it's everywhere with a government issue. The difference as to why the EU people seem to be more OK with government intrusion compared to the US, is that EU always has external aggressors the government can point to as justification for invasiveness and control, while the US has been and still is the unchallenged global superpower so it has no real external threats ATM, meaning division must be manufactured internally (left vs right, red vs blue, woke vs maga, skin color vs skin color, gender vs gender, etc) so that the ruling class can assert control in peace.
Either way, we all seem to be heading towards the same destination.
Only from corporations, but not from their own governments. A lot of Europeans put a lot of blind faith into their governments and the EU, and criticism of these institutions is usually met with accusations of being a bot, MAGA or russian troll.
>The European institutions are characterized by a huge devision of power.
Didn't really stop them passing whatever rules they wanted during Covid, did it? Or today with Russia and Ukraine situation. Sure is convenient that we keep having more and more crisis and boogiemen that governments can leverage to deflect accountability and bypass the wishes of the population, for our own good of course.
>There is no chance that European instutitions can impose their will against a considerable majority of people.
Famous last words. People always can be, and routinely are, manipulated to vote against their own best interests, even if everyone claims manipulation doesn't work on them. The propaganda industry is HUGE. Why do you think Germans supported to tie themselves to Russia's gas and destroy their nuclear power. Was it all their original thoughts or was it a massive campaign of dis-/mis-information designed to get everyone on board the same train? And mass manipulation like this is every other Tuesday these days. See Cambridge Analytica.
A individual person can be smart, but people together as a collective voting block, are stupid, and the elites treat us like cattle, as seen in the recent files.
The problem with this phrasing is it makes it sound hyperbolic, but it is important to remember the world is large and there are always, in a literal and normal sense, multiple major crises going on at any moment.
People who don't pay much attention to politics sometimes get confused about why crises elevated by the corporate media get ignored. A big answer is becuase they are elevated for political reasons, usually the crisis is fairly routine in absolute terms.
True, but my point I wanted to draw attention to, is HOW these crisis are handled now, not that there's many of them.
Every crisis now seems to be exclusively used as a vehicle to justify taking away just a little bit more of your freedom and anonymity, or implement more fiscal policies that will leave you footing the bill but just so happens it will be enriching the wealthy as a side effect.
Because such policies shoved out the door in times of crisis, don't pass through the lengthy public debates and scrutiny regular policies have to go through, so it's the perfect opportunity to sneak and fast-track some nefarious stuff in.
I'm not that old yet, but I don't feel like this backdoor was misused to this extent in the past, like pre-2008 I mean (except 9/11 of course). It definitely feels like politicians have gooten of taste and are abusing this exploit now more with every little opportunity.
Now imagine being debanked by your own government because they don't like what you're saying and becoming unemployed, homeless and dead. I don't think they're remotely comparable.
For example, a few years ago, a power tripping gov bureaucrat turned off my unemployment payments over a technicality. Luckily, I had enough money to pay a lawyer to sue them and won, but it was tight. What if I hadn't had the money to hire a lawyer? Since I was in a foreign country, with no family or close friends to fall back on. I was exclusively relying on the welfare state I paid into for years, that then turn its back on me for shits and giggles.
So I don't think you understand just how bad it can be for you if your government decides to turn on you and fuck with you, if you're comparing this to losing access to your work email account.
See the famous case of UK postal workers that got fucked by their government trying to hide their mistakes.
Of course in this judge's case there might still be some banks who are willing to work with him even at the risk of getting sanctioned as there weren't language in the news that he was completely debanked which I assume they would highlight if it was the case.
It is not unreasonable for governments to pursue avenues for laundering money. I recognize that you likely don't believe governments should prosecute money laundering, but that view is not aligned with the majority of citizens in your country.
Since when is google a bank?
>The only solution is untraceable, permissionless money, like Monero. Why do you think governments try so hard to ban it?
Because untraceable currency is mostly used by criminals for crime.
How is this comparable to your government debanking you meaning that no bank, landlord, layer or job will touch you?
It's as close as you get to a complete shunning from modern society. You're reset to the cash you hold on you and keep custody of. And yes. In the U.S., the list that manages who can and cannot transact is centralized under OFAC. So it is at the whims of Executive whether or not any financial activity can be done with you.
They lost access to everything american, including Visa and Mastercard. It's in french and maybe not the best source but it's not paywalled :
https://www.tf1info.fr/international/nous-sommes-attaques-le...
> "Payments are mostly cancelled," he continued, "as almost all cards issued by banking institutions in Europe are either Visa or Mastercard, which are American companies."
They are not completely debanked since they can go to the bank and withdraw cash, but it's a crippling situation to be in.
One only needs a few looks at what the EU Commission has been doing lately to see that if left unchecked their plan is a UK-like total surveillance state.
Attestation in on itself isn't unwarranted which (to me) is an important security measure. Attestation as commonly implemented on Android via Play Integrity (the way banking apps are known to do) is restrictive, sure: https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu... / https://archive.is/snGEu
It's a security measure against the owner of the device, in other words, an attack. Would you be okay with me using a remote control to forcibly slow down your car so I can merge? Using attestation this way is fundamentally incompatible with ownership. If the bank wants some assurance about a device, they need to sell or issue one to me, like credit cards or point of sale machines, which are explicitly not your property.
The fact that the assurance is provided by a third party you have little recourse against just adds insult to injury.
Would you consider MFA to be a measure against you, the owner of the device, because it makes it harder for you to login?
>If the bank wants some assurance about a device, they need to sell or issue one to me
They are offering you free software and are operating under a security model tied to these specific devices. You're still free to walk into their branches, or use their physical cards, if you prefer not use their limited selection of devices.
>Would you be okay with me using a remote control to forcibly slow down your car
Car manufacturers do this as well though. Some of this is for the benefit of their customers (preventing theft from easily cloned keys). Some of this is not for customer benefit, like locking down infotainment systems.
Banks however are only interested in preventing fraud.
In this example, a banking app is not making the entire Android device non functional when it refuses to work when remote attestation like Play Integrity fails.
If it's an important safety measure _for me_, shouldn't I get to decide whether I need it based on context?
I think it's fair for banks to apply different risk scores based on the signals they have available (including attestation state), but I also don't want the financial system, government & big tech platforms to have a hard veto on what devices I compute with.
Sure, banks could probably build a mechanism that lets some users opt out of this, just as they could add a Klingon localization to their apps. There just isn't enough demand.
I don't think a good security engineer would rely on atty as "front line" anti brute force control since bypasses are not that rare. But yeah you might incorporate it into the flow. Just like captchas, rate limiting, fingerprints etc and all the other controls you need for web, anyway.
I know I'm quibbling. My concern is that future where banks can "trust the client" is a future of total big tech capture of computing platforms, and I know banks and government don't really care, but I do.
Correct. And the end of ownership, privacy, and truth too. If something can betray you on someone else's orders, it's not yours in the first place. You'll own nothing and if you aren't happy, good luck living in the woods.
Hm, Play Integrity isn't that slow on Android, from my experience.
> don't think a good security engineer would rely on atty as "front line" anti brute force control since bypasses are not that rare
I'm not privy to device-wide bypasses of Play Integrity that ship with Trusted Execution Environment (which is pretty much all ARM based Androids), Secure Element, and/or Hardware Root of Trust, but I'd appreciate if you have some significant exploit writeups (on Pixels, preferably) for me to look at?
> My concern is that future where banks can "trust the client" is a future of total big tech capture of computing platforms
A valid concern. In the case of smart & personal devices like Androids though, the security is warranted due to the nature of the workloads it tends to support (think Pacemaker / Insulin monitoring apps; government-issued IDs; financial instruments like credit cards; etc) and the ubiquity & proliferation of the OS (more than half of all humanity) itself.
I don't know about Huawei, but actually most (all?) of the banking apps in Spain should work on a non-Google-certified Android builds. There's an community list tracking GrapheneOS compatibility at https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa... and all of them currently appear supported just fine.
https://www.androidauthority.com/why-i-use-grapheneos-on-pix...
> Police in Spain have reportedly started profiling people based on their phones; specifically, and surprisingly, those carrying Google Pixel devices. Law enforcement officials in Catalonia say they associate Pixels with crime because drug traffickers are increasingly turning to these phones. But it’s not Google’s secure Titan M2 chip that has criminals favoring the Pixel — instead, it’s GrapheneOS, a privacy-focused alternative to the default Pixel OS.
EDIT: Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44473694
The article starts with Wero right off the bat, which a pan-European rebrand and continuation of the Dutch Ideal. The Dutch have been using Ideal everywhere, and you usually use that to pay online. It redirects you to your bank to acknowledge the transaction, and most bank have auth methods where a smartphone is optional. Most often used for sure, but optional, and you can complete the transaction with a hardware reader and your debit card as well.
The only exception are the neobanks like Bunq, which actually are smartphone-only. That one in particular is great if you appreciate the CEO and staff keeping a personal eye on your transactions (no kidding).
Likewise, in Germany we can have SEPA for most stuff.
And in Greece there is Viva.
Problem is getting something that actually works across all European countries.
While we may make most of our payments within EU, basically everyone still occasionally pays for something outside of EU, either online or when they travel. This means if the new thing only works in EU, every European will still need and have a MasterCard/Visa even if they use it less often than before.
This is still a massive amount of leverage - MC/Visa still have the ability to block payments made from EU citizens/companies to outside.
I suppose the most problematic would be traveling. I recently when outside the EU and was surprise how smooth the process was using my Visa card, to the point I didn't use any local currency.
On the other hand, I recently buy books from the UK and it get stuck for two weeks in customs, and it had nothing to do with the payment platform. I had not realized how difficult is to import something from outside the EU, even for personal use.
The big benefit is that all internal EU card transactions are no longer routed via US companies which is quite ridiculous.
its not exclusive, but there is a problem with network effects. From the point of view of a business why should they add support for a new payment system no one users, from the point of view of consumers why should they sign up to a new system that no one accepts?
As I said in another comment the most likely alternative is a more decentralised system that all countries/currency blocks that want sovereign payments can get behind.
It is majorly used for debit cards, and similar in use to the famous Minitel in France.
You can use it to load pre-pay phones, or other kinds of rechargeable services, buy tickets for public transport and various kinds of shows, pay water, electricity, taxes, among other services.
There is now an app used to pay on shops via QR codes.
You can also pay online with one time cards, that are generated for a single transaction.
Outside Portugal it is a regular debit card.
When you access Multibanco with foreign cards, you can only withdraw money usually.
That said, I love MB and MB Way. What an upgrade it's been over paying for stuff in the US (where I lived before moving to Portugal).
I was buying tickets on MB, before it became common place in the Internet.
All the stuff I'm familiar with is only payments (with entity and reference).
Now that I think about it, you could search for things on Minitel but I don't remember if payments were made as phone charges or if they could also be done with transfers.
Minitel was so prohibitively expensive to use (just about every service cost multiple francs per minute), I didn't do much with it.
https://immolusitania.ch/the-real-deal-with-atm-machines-in-...
It works for the purpose to pay something online.
If you want an example, Eurowings.
What's an extra layer of surveillance? Why accept the "credit and debit" surveillance middlemen but not the google/apple middlenmen?
What the world needs are "cash cards". Something equivalent to cash not tied to your identity that you can use in the real and virtual world.
I simply do not understand why governments or the private sector do not provide such options.
Banks generally don't like disposable digital purse cards. They make money off fees and interest. If a product doesn't rope you into a customer "relationship" where you link your pay deposits or later might get a mortgage or car loan they can only make money off fees. Enjoy paying $5 to activate a $100 prepaid debit card!
Using Google or Apple Pay so I can tap my phone instead of my card gives me no extra benefit that I care about and complicates my ecosystem with another party.
Only in the U.S. In many other countries the processing fees are regulated by the government so the banks can't afford to give you your "cash back".
But isn't the promise of Apple Pay that you never expose your real credit card # to the merchant? So they can't track you? I know Walmart in Canada really resisted Apple Pay for a few years because it would mean no more ability to track people by their payment methods.
Yes, this is exactly what Walmart does in the US since they still don't accept Apple Pay/Google Pay. When I go in and make a purchase using my credit or debit card, they'll associate it with my Walmart account and it'll show up as a "recent order" in the Walmart app because I have the same card saved there for ordering groceries online. They use those in-store purchases to recommend things to add to my grocery orders all the time.
Example, in France most debit and credit cards are called "carte bleue" (literally blue card) but all of them either have a visa/mastercard logo. However when you pay with them you can decide with the merchant to use the CB system or the visa/mastercard. Sadly very few people know that and do the selection.
I would also hope so, that is the entire point. The reason they are scrambling right now is because Starlink just shut off all of Russia. Because Starlink was so cheap and easy (and stable for the last 4 years of the war), a lot of people in Russia stopped using any other form of internet access. And while all of Europe is happy to see Russia go away, they are concerned that the same can be done to them at a whim by any number of American companies. So they are trying to quickly create alternatives to anything American including software providers like Microsoft 360.
As for credit cards, it is not as if there is something intrinsically American in credit card processing. They can just as easily create a new system that uses the same protocols as Visa and Mastercard.
Having your entire economy dependent on a company you don't control in a country you don't control was considered acceptable for as long as a concept of "allies" existed. That is not the world we are living in right now.
What you're saying is just plain false. No one has ever used Starlink in Russia. It doesn't even work here. It never did. Russian troops were using Starlink on Ukrainian territory, that's what was shut off.
They're the same bright minds that ensured no alternatives could naturally come out of the European market trough relentless bureaucratic central planning. I have zero hopes of a good outcome
What are you talking about? Starlink never worked in russia. It worked in Ukraine, and it was shutdown in Ukraine by using a white list for which any Ukrainian can easily apply.
The goal was to shutdown Starlink usage by russian drones in Ukraine and by anyone on the occupied Ukrainian territories.
What are you smoking ..err.. any source to your claim ? (Which is between bizarre and just plain wrong).
My point being, if these payment systems start becoming more interconnected and join within a standard, I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually saw Bizum cards around here, Wero cards in other places, and many more.
At least that's my take on it. Of course there's still a long way to go, such as developing the system, banks adopting it, businesses adopting it, then customers (which would probably take years, many people wouldn't bother switching at least until their current card expires)
Even if it does, Google won't be taking a cut from it.
Also, it's then much easier to provide a mobile web version, or something else.
My country's internal system also sells a bracelet for contactless payments, and there are obviously payment cards.
Once there's a mandatory standard, it's much more likely competition will show up. EU wide SWIFT, direct debits, instant transfers, all show this.
It's an app that uses NFC or, if needed, reads a QR code and does a web request (i.e. needs internet).
Neither Google nor Apple will block that, or take a cut; and it's already available in multiple markets.
This is about taking stuff that already works in one or two countries, design a similar system that works across countries, and mandate that all banks under ECB supervision implement it.
Google keeps self-sabotaging Android Pay. They lacked market power so cellular carriers blocked it hoping to advance their own payment ecosystem (ISIS). Google changes the payment brand every few years, and fragments it into two separate apps or combines them. It's rather like their messaging strategy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface
It sounds a lot like what they're discussing.
Some examples: Wall Street = NY Stock Exchange the White House = US president and his cabinet the Pentagon = US Dept of Defense Downing Street = UK prime minister
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy Scotland Yard = Greater London Metropolitan Police Tehran = Government/officials of the islamic republic of Iran
Sorry: This is Spain (to clarify).
Physical cards ftw!
Btw i love simply using cash in South America when getting a taxi, no stupid "apps", no tech nonsense. Just wait at a proper spot and hail.
I suspect simply stating that it must be a supported standard will do most of the work, much like standardising phone chargers.
No, these companies keep themselves in power not because they've solved such a difficult problem that nobody else can, but because they have a moat which they protect.
Time to do away with these foreign entities.
- For many consumers there isn't sufficient money in the account to settle all the one-time and ongoing transactions they are liable for -- credit cards are giving you a revolving loan, there's risk it will not be repaid, and that risk ends up reflected in processing fees
- For many _businesses_ managing cash flow is existential -- as merchants they want to be paid as quickly as possible, but as B2B customers they want to have 30-60 days to sell the input goods they've purchased so they can pay for them upstream. There is a premium for that flexibility that gets reflected in processing fees.
- For both consumers and merchants, fraud risk is real and while it's the most solvable part of all this it's a real (and costly!) factor today. That risk for fraud gets moved upstream to the networks/acquirers/processors/issuers and that premium shows up in (you guessed it) processing fees.
If you want to switch the world to a debit-based system where economic transactions are limited by cash on hand, I'd argue that's a poorer and less dynamic world than the one we're operating in today.
Payment networks don’t provide credit or any kind of liquidity whatsoever, that entirely provided by the various financial entities that communicate via the payment network. The reason Visa and Mastercard haven’t been easily replaced is simple network effects, nobody wants to integrate with a payment network where there’s nobody to transact with.
American Express is big in this market - what looks like a normal Amex Business Platinum card can very well be a charge card that needs to be paid in full at the due date every month.
There are minor differences but the big one is no carried balance between months is allowed. Payment in full due each month.
And if you are a $MegaBigCorp customer of them, you can customize even more.
Things have been changing a bit in recent years. Since the "debit" and "credit" nature of the card is now written on them, French folks have started to request "credit" ones for travelling (to rent a car for instance).
My understanding is that for car rental purposes, anything using Visa/MC (and not a national debit network like Visa Debit in the US) will work, it doesn't actually need to be backed by a revolving credit. At a US gas pump, a Frenchie needs to select "credit" even though the card has "debit" written on it. Still, should the clerk refuse the card because it reads "debit" without running it... better have this "credit"-labeled one.
Many companies will refuse all debit cards, or all cards with "electronic use only" restriction, at least for the deposit, irrespective of the payment network involved.
If your CC is stolen, you are not out all the cash in your account until the dispute is resolved.
If your debit card is stolen, you lose that cash, making it more difficult to pay whatever other obligations you have that period.
Also how would someone misuse it? You need a PIN Code for every transaction anyway, and the EMV Chip can't be cloned like Magstripes.
Online Payments need a mandatory 2 Factor Authentication
But the more concerning fraud is when you purchase something and don't receive what you should have received from the merchant. Whether it is due to outright fraud or not. In these cases you will also have your money reimbursed by your credit or debit card.
But even if it were - most people operate one checking account, and most folks don't keep an especially large balance. If your debit card gets compromised or there is an erroneous charge, it will process up to your balance. It is incumbent on you to notice the fraud and take action. If the bad dip is today, and tomorrow morning my mortgage and other payments bounce or hit overdraft, I have a mess to clean up.
With a credit card, you're typically hitting a larger credit line that isn't fully utilize -- you may not notice the bad charge for a month, but there's no impact to you... the thief stole the bank's money.
This may be what the letter of the law says but this isn't reality. Using debit puts you at greater financial risk.
What how? Surely the US populations credit card debt dorf even the global populations debit card fraud numbers. So while my whole family in a combined 200 years of adulthood have indeed lost some 1000 euro total in fraud, it's not thing compared to the average Americans credit card bills.
I'd rather risk the street criminals with my debit than the suit wearing ones with their credit.
With a credit card, if the card is compromised, its not my money being stolen - its the card issuer's money from my line of credit, and they were planning on settling up with me when my monthly statement closes. I still have to launch a fraud case with the issuer, but critically, _all of my money is still in my bank account_ and I can continue to pay my other bills and obligations as normal.
I think its reasonable to consider giving up that buffer to be additional risk for the debit card approach, setting aside any other advantages or disadvantages between the two.
Just a quick Google... Wells Fargo's policy is 10 days to either case resolution OR provisional credit. I assume that's typical for American banks. For somebody living paycheck to paycheck, 10 days is a long time to go without access to what little cash they might have.
Not to mention the per-purchase (online/in-person) limits, mandatory PIN entry, and daily maximums...
I've never had a web shop use an API to deduct from my bank account - the closest thing is PayPal, which as far as I can tell is basically ACH under the covers, just though an intermediary. Pretty sure more Americans use their CC or debit card for online shopping.
In fact just today I read this article in my EU country that sounds almost identical to what this comment describes:
“ If, for example, the payment was made by credit card and the product has not been delivered, the consumer can contact their credit card company directly and request a refund.
Credit card firms can usually refund the money quickly, Beurling-Pomoell noted, whereas consumers who paid by debit card must try to claim their money back from the bankruptcy estate.
"Unfortunately, [reclaiming money from a bankruptcy estate] is usually a very long and difficult process. Consumers are generally in a relatively weak position when a company goes bankrupt," he said.
Beurling-Pomoell added that consumers should always consider using a credit card when purchasing a product that they do not immediately receive.”
Their self-harming has been impressive.
https://www.ft.com/content/837a7b40-f534-11e3-91a8-00144feab...
https://svenskforfattningssamling.se/sites/default/files/sfs...
Edit: Page 28 to be precise.
The law explicitly states that funds have to be reimbursed to the victim immediately or at latest on the same bank day.
It’s sort of true in a legal sense, but not a practical one. If you find yourself in a dispute (even outright fraud sometimes) you might end up stuck for weeks or months with your disputed funds frozen.
If you are a highly paid software engineer with considerable assets and transaction volume at your bank it’s likely you will never experience hardship with disputing a transaction. If you are someone scraping by and that $200 depends on you paying rent on time that month you will find your experience to perhaps be different.
I’ve helped friends and family with such disputes in the past. Credit cards even when it “goes wrong” are much better to deal with. Your credit limit being reduced a bit is immaterial to your life most of the time. Having your own money tied up during an investigation that demands more and more paperwork like police reports etc. can be incredibly damaging and if nothing else quite stressful. The experience some of my friends had in these matters is nothing like I had when I had my wallet stolen and I no longer recommend anyone use debit if they can avoid it.
Heck, I had a friend who doesn’t even have a passport dispute an ATM transaction in a country he never visited. The bank initially denied it and it took weeks to eventually get it resolved in his favor.
In the end having the banks money tied up vs your own money at risk is always better if you can handle the responsibility of a credit card.
Was that an introduction to the rest of your comment?
Explain to me please how a dispute with a vendor on a purchase makes a difference for your ability to pay rent? If the purchase was not fraud, then you have used that money anyway with your purchase. Unless you're planning to pay rent by bartering your Amazon order.
If you're instead talking about a stolen or cloned debit card, then that money is refunded usually as soon as you've made a police report and sent it to the bank, which is a matter of two days at most. The paperwork is not difficult, because cards get stolen and cloned all the time.
But the fraud protection is the same, even if procedures and timelines might differ.
This is a uniquely American viewpoint. In most of Europe you don't buy anything on credit ever.
By December 2025, consumer credit in the Euro area alone stood at an estimated €812 billion.
Sure, in Europe people will subscribe to a credit to buy a car or materials to improve their home.
But buying your groceries or lunch with a credit card is quite a rare exception.
Airbnb reservations I also tend to do on credit.
Anything related to company expenses I also do on credit and receive reimbursement prior to having to pay it myself.
The only time I even considered it was to build a credit score in the UK to eventually apply for a mortgage, but even then it's not really necessary.
Not having a credit score isn't necessarily a big problem, as banks use it for context rather than making decisions purely based on it, but I did see some advice online about getting a "credit builder card" [1] (essentially a high interest and low credit limit card) as a way to build up credit history.
I decided that getting in debt just so I can prove I can get out of it is a stupid system, and didn't do it. Last time I checked (with Experian), I had a perfect credit score, so I don't know what happened in the meantime.
1: https://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/credit-cards/types/credi...
From your nickname it sounds like you are from Romania so if that's so there might be a dose of xenofobia included there as well. That is kinda big in the UK right now, the whole Brexit was fuelled by it, sadly, especially concerning eastern Europe. I was on the receiving end of some of it myself too, being called 'a non-national' and eyed with distrust. I'm sorry.
Besides, if you want insurance just get a 30€ per year rolling package.
You could draw all of it and put in a a 2x leveraged SP500 ETF :-D for 3 month and then return the money :-D
The widespread use with "buy now pay later" also counters your wildly baseless claim. Klarna, PayPal 30 days etc.
I'm confused - is it not the issuing bank that gives you the loan, and the credit card company just provides the infrastructure?
Btw. having an overdraft limit of a few hundred Euros is quite typical for those liquidity issues. You don't need a credit card for that.
1. Merchant (bears little fraud risk but a lot of chargeback risk)
2. Payment Gateway (little direct risk but some liability risk)
3. Merchant Acquirer (more direct risk but mostly if merchants become insolvent)
4. Card Network (Visa/MC/AmEx - less risk but significant underlying costs managing a global technology that spans the financial system and needs to be distributed to almost every merchant of any scale in America)
5. Issuers (Banks + AmEx - most risk but get a big share of interchange fees)
I've surely missed something here that the very smart (and increasingly grumpy these days!) HN community will doubtlessly pile-on to correct, so I apologize in advance for errors or omissions... and I bow down if @patio11 swoops in to tell me about the complexity I've missed in either payments or Japanese economic/cultural conventions
Will also add that the benefit of credit is not overdraft but smoothing cash flow... if I'm living paycheck to paycheck and get paid every two weeks, I will incur essential expenses at the beginning of the fortnight that I can afford but lack cash in my account to pay now. I can't overdraft because I won't have the funds to deposit into that account for another two weeks. I'm getting a service that smooths my cashflow and there's a small premium added to reflect that. (Could you save up enough to avoid needing this? Is that a uniquely American way of living? I don't know! I'm making a descriptive claim not a normative one!)
They fought tooth and nail against cash discounts OR credit surcharges and they finally lost. In some areas it's rampant that you get a pretty substantial discount - often 4 or 5%, better than cash-back - and many places post "cash prices".
You can get even more if you're willing to ride the hassle of the gift card train.
The credit card companies know people spend more if they use credit cards, and they turn around and sell that to the merchants.
Credit card companies are allowed to run cashback for using them.
All in the name of "consumer rights": https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/payment-surcharge...
Colorado law recently changed permitting merchants to pass on the actual cost of processing, except for cash, check and debit payments.
https://colorado.public.law/statutes/crs_5-2-212
This law overrides any prior contractual agreements with banks/processing companies that prohibit surcharges. This is previously how MasterCard and VISA coerced merchants into absorbing the processing fee, by contractually requiring credit same as cash pricing.
Neither Visa nor MasterCard are loaning customers their money. It's the European banks that hold the bulk of the risk for European credit card transactions.
Chip and pin and NFC transitions took off much quicker outside the US because merchants generally owned more of the chargeback risk than in the US, and therefore were willing to update their POS equipment accordingly.
Risk (like debt) is another place where a US-centric view will likely lead you to misunderstand the purpose of Visa/MC.
Not really. The risk of all fraud is initial borne by banks issuing the cards, after all they’re only parties that have an actual financial relationship with the person providing the cash/debt. If something which results in that person cash/debt being stolen, it’s between that person and their bank to figure out who’s liable for the lost money. Chargebacks are just a mechanism for banks to recover some of that lost money, once the liability between the card holder and the bank has been settled.
One of the big reasons why Chip and PIN etc took off outside of the US, is that the US is very accepting of fraud, and charging crazy high interchange rates (up to 10x what they are in Europe) so the cost of fraud is spread over many individuals. Other parts of the world have regulations capping interchange rates, and providing better consumer protection, demanding that banks and payment networks tackle fraud, rather than increase the cost of everything by 1-2% to cover fraud losses.
And the bulk of the fees from credit card transactions goes to the bank(s) since they hold the risk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee#:~:text=The%20...
This is really much less of a thing in Europe, or at the very least in Germany and Spain. Mostly it's the overdraft from banks that you can use as what you call a revolving loan. Most of the visa and mastercards I've had in my life simply debit from my main account.
Some of the services include: - Consumer Credit - Fraud protection - Payment network - Discount service (rewards, etc) - Concierge services - Rental/Ticketing services - etc
No one is denying the utility of what they have created. The problem is they’ve built monopolistic walled gardens where these are all bundled together which raises overall costs while also prevents competition.
These services can easily be unbundled (for example in India the payment network is open and cost free, so anyone can provide those other services on top of the payment network).
What has made this far more urgent, however, is that these companies are located in the U.S. which has recently leveraged the power these networks have to attack EU citizens for frivolous reasons.
So even if the MC/Visa business model was perfect, it would be foolish for even American allies to rely on them given the actions of the current administration.
Disagree. Credit has its uses, but debit is superior for the vast majority consumer transactions: lower fees, lower risk, instant settlement, easy P2P transfers, and broader accessibility. That we've become used to credit card payment system in the West is largely a historical aberration that needs correcting.
Also, I'm a bit biased since I live in China, but WeChat Pay and Alipay are so far superior to the credit card system that I can hardly find a single redeeming quality in the latter. China was lucky in that it leapfrogged the traditional credit card system since it didn't have that historical baggage.
I lost 3 credit cards INSIDE an airplane (hello AirAsia!). I only realized it when I turned on my phone while queuing at immigration and was bombarded with dozens of "Successful transaction" messages. That's ~30min from stepping off the airplane. When I checked my statements, I saw dozens of physical transactions (swipes/taps) with different merchants in different cities from the airport.
All 3 cards have different PINs. All require a PIN for transactions above ~USD200. Yet the banks rejected my disputes because "it's a physical transaction, so you must be the one doing it." Apparently, they all think I could fly to different cities, buy different items, and fly back to wait in immigration, all in 30 minutes.
https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/nfc-gate-relay-attacks-2026/5...
Their risk is covered multiple ways (as reflected in their profits). You pay an annual fee to have a card. You pay per transaction, you pay for paywave, you pay 21% in interest.
They cover their risk by hitting every possible angle.
Err, no - for _all_ businesses managing cash flow is the _only_ NR 1 crucial thing, because if they dont, they will disappear by tomorrow :)
In the EU, debit cards are pretty common, and largely its a network effect. You need to get terminals that are supported by your payment provider.
A lot of merchant terminals are provided by banks, and frankly they are itching to get a sweet sweet cut of each transaction. Not only the information, but the cut of each transaction. Something like 0.2-1.5% of each transaction. (I'm sure mastercard and visa give them a cut)
For Credit cards, the banks/operator already handle most of the risk, and then pay visa a percentage for the privilege of charging usury like rates
Also bank transfers are easy, instant and free.
> For many _businesses_ managing cash flow is existential -- as merchants they want to be paid as quickly as possible, but as B2B customers they want to have 30-60 days to sell the input goods they've purchased so they can pay for them upstream. There is a premium for that flexibility that gets reflected in processing fees.
Yes those businesses use a bank loan for this, no need for a credit card again.
> If you want to switch the world to a debit-based system where economic transactions are limited by cash on hand, I'd argue that's a poorer and less dynamic world than the one we're operating in today.
Thinking that the world doesn't have credit just because they use debit cards is one of the most idiotic things I've read today
If I take a random loan with the bank and use those funds to do the same purchases using debit, then I'm the one taking the loss.
I think there's plenty of money to back all the activity.
Especially if there are central banks willing to back them
Visa/MC make about 0.1-0.13% of each transaction, not a 1-2%. The rest of the interchange (the vast majority) goes to the issuing bank.
Most Dutch people were unaware of the issue (because Dutch cards worked abroad), and those who were, were fully convinced that it's because Dutch system is objectively better (it wasn't, it was just a separate network). Then in like 2024/2025 Visa and Mastercard finally retired their special V-Pay and Maestro brands, and now most terminals in the Netherlands accept most normal cards.
National banking players did not want to give up their turf. The European Union had to twist their arms to get them to agree to SEPA transfers, instant transfers, etc.
If banking players cannot agree, then regulation (or the threat of regulation) must be used.
I once worked at a company doing payment card personalization (its the company who turn blank smart cards into finalized cards on behalf of banks. They print the customers names, emboss the account number, and program the chip and the magstrip)
Every year they had comprehensive security audits from Visa, Mastercard and Groupe Carte Bleue.
One guy there told me that they did the Groupe Carte Bleue audit first, because its the toughest. If they passed it they were sure to pass the others.
Trump sure has moved the needle on that! We used to pay protection money to the US via this. Now we don't get the protection, so we don't need to pay.
VISA and Mastercard never resolved major technical problems. It's nothing a bank wouldn't already be able to achieve internally from a technological complexity point of view. They didn't invent any of the technologies, they just navigated the political and regulatory hurdles, then leveraged their position for more.
Your comment makes it look like the problems are "just" political or regulatory. These are more often then not the bigger ones.
Technology and some systems could be shared.
There are also business and regulatory problems with regard to international transactions.
It wouldn't be hacker news without a comment like this. I haven't personally worked in finance, but I've had a lot of friends do it.
It _absolutely_ is complicated. It's not too complicated for a nation or the EU to do it in house, but no, there's a bit more there than "Claude make me a ledger"
I don't know that the problem is sophisticated, but it's certainly complex [1]. It's a bit of both in terms of complexity and defending a moat, which all businesses do, including, and especially European ones.
And companies like Visa, Mastercard, American Express, &c. arose initially from solving a real need. Before these companies came into existence when you traveled you'd have to take cash, or traveler's checks or some other nonsense. Today you can, at least as an American, just walk in to the subway in just about any country and tap to pay. Need a coffee at Mt. Fuji? Easy. Buying a bottle of Calvados in some remote area? Yea just tap to pay with your Mastercard.
> Time to do away with these foreign entities.
You'll never do that. Why? Because at a minimum you want American tourist dollars and Europe isn't going to start issuing European credit cards to Americans or other citizens around the world.
[1] Why is it complex? Well you have to deal with American and European financial regulations, KYC, &c. - you have to vet merchants, you have to run the infrastructure to process transactions, refunds, direct payments from bank accounts to pay for cards, and all of those things. Those are real, genuine business activities that are non-negotiable and while they may seem simple, in practice they are not at all simple.
The reality is more complicated.
I have had Visa or Mastercard being refused in other countries by some retail outlets / institutions.
In fact I never travel with only one card from a single bank because I always want to have a backup. And it is not really Visa vs Mastercard because I have had occurences of having 2 Visas, one of which would work and another would not on a specific shop for no obvious nor documented reason.
It could be handled similarly to how tourists in Brazil can now use Brazil's Pix payment system.
One way Brazil handles it is with 3rd party digital wallets that tourists can install on their phones such as Wallbit [1]. Another way is with 3rd party services that let you pay from your own digital wallet or bank app and the service makes the Pix payment [2].
[1] https://www.wallbit.io/en/blog/brazilian-pix-and-a-payment-a...
[2] https://www.pagbrasil.com/lp/pix-for-international-travelers...
Thankfully Americans at least have enough purchasing power that the demand for convenience - just take my money with this card will keep us away from bad solutions in Europe.
Only sucks for the Americans though, I think most people non American countries will be fine with that
(Although you CAN pay with pix at many supermarkets, I'd rate it as rare. Also useable for online payments, but you take the risk in case of fraud, unlike with creditcards)
If you don't have the ability to accept a card at all, that's a different use case.
I think your everyday credit/debit card is still objectively better overall, even moreso for tourists which was the main topic.
Not if you are paid in cash by your employer
We were until this guy joined in!
Those are partially or completely taken over not by the card network but by the bank that is issuing you the card, so a change in the underlying technology will be transparent.
Hard disagree. Until Covid, many small shops didn't take cards in Europe. Taxis, restaurants, market stalls, even trains were often cash only not that long ago. I in the UK ran accounts in companies that had people travel extensively in Europe. We used to issue travellers with EUR200 for the things that cards couldn't buy. Most shops didn't take Amex due to fees. Americans will either have to bring a compliant card or change some cash at the airport.
I also think you have misjudged the mood. I guarantee there are a large number of people in rural Europe that would be very happy never to meet another American tourist, even if it costs them. Americans can look forward to worse service everywhere. I wouldn't be suprised if some people in rural France refused to let you have the Calvados at all.
If you do not accept Visa and Mastercard you are not going to accept payments from all sorts of travellers (tourists, business people, people from your own country living abroad) either.
> I guarantee there are a large number of people in rural Europe that would be very happy never to meet another American tourist, even if it costs them.
Xenophobic or anti-tourism?
Who all stop in chain hotels, who will accept whatever you bring.
> Xenophobic or anti-tourism?
Anti-American tourism. I would say it is a mainstream opinion in Europe that American tourists are very annoying. Each country has its stereotypes about each other, usually stemming from WW2, but the feelings against American tourists have the wonderful effect of uniting Europe. Then America elected a president that threatened us first with economic sanctions, then war. Perhaps it is a fault in our characters, but we tend to take against people that threaten us with military action.
No, that's pretty much all European hotels actually. Hotels require credit cards for three reasons:
1. Security - if you leave the room a mess or destroyed there's an avenue for recourse.
2. To make more money - having a card on file for "incidentals" increases purchases from hotel guests.
3. Obtain payment - most people don't have the cash laying around to pony up to pay full nightly rates, nor do they have any desire carry thousands of Euros around on their person just to go pay in a large purchase at this conjured up local cash-only inn. It also makes your hotel property an easy target for robbery.
It's strange to me that you're taking such a hard stance over something that is obviously incorrect in order to... make fun of people from around the world who can only afford to stay in chain hotels on vacation?
I usually stay boutique properties which are sometimes, but not always managed by boutique property groups. They take credit cards. Every. Single. Time.
Can you provide the name of a single hotel in Europe that doesn't take credit cards?
It works at the moment, here in France, with Swile (for instance)
Opposed to what America has become.
As for your second paragraph, you seem to be dreaming. Americans are some of the best tourists to deal with, and anybody who works in the tourism sector is happy to receive them.
A few years ago I shut down a website in Poland for someone because people didn't want to pay with cards, they wanted COD. My colleague took a train regularly in the Netherlands a few years back that was cash only. Dutch websites also have to offer whatever the Dutch payment provider is (I forget). Another colleague in rural Spain found that the price they were charged was lower if they paid cash by the exact amount of VAT. In Germany I ran a website that had to allow bank transfer as a payment method because 'companies generally don't have credit cards' according to the locals. Up until Covid travellers from our office to France and Germany always needed to use a few Euros. Up until Covid it was an absolute taboo to buy drinks with a card in the UK and Ireland, unless it was with a meal. My local chip shop is cash only today, but none of them had a machine before Covid. My local Chinese restaurant tells everyone the card machine is dodgy to see if they will pay cash. They only installed it during Covid.
I think we will manage without Visa just fine.
> and anybody who works in the tourism sector is happy to receive them.
Of course they are! That is literally their job. It is everyone else that has a problem with them.
As for your run-ins with card hostile businesses and people, you have the option to make your purchases with businesses who accept cards. Most customers choose that options, because cards offer the best protection and convenience for the customer. To the tune of the endless teeth grinding of some small business owners who think that their low profits are to blame on a tiny merchant fee.
Is that really true? I remember wanting to buy a train ticket at Charles De Gaulle airport, and the machine only took French credit cards. That was around 2010, so I don't know if something changed.
The wonderful French train company wouldn't refund the ticket either and instead insisted that we might use it one day on another trip to France. Thankfully by the time I got to the front of the line to chat in broken French to the ticket administrator, I had already accepted my fate after hearing a number of tourists (not Americans mind you) yell and stomp their feet uselessly in hopes of obtaining a refund.
[1] That was a fun adventure too. At CDG, well I found out later that taxis are "allowed" and are the same price as the Uber ride and so we could have avoided this by just taking a taxi through Uber, but a group of folks from Great Britain were ahead of me in line and I came across them later when looking for where to get a taxi/Uber. There were rideshare signs or something but they didn't lead anywhere that made sense. They seemed rather aspirational. Well, one of the members of the British group spoke good French (or good enough) and found out the secret spot to go after chatting with an airport employee I think it's at Terminal E (someone else may know for sure) or something and so my wife and I befriended the same British group and went along with them for the long walk over.
We were able to get a ride, though not cheap. Of course the bus was an option and we're no stranger, but we were on vacation and the $50 ride was just chalked up to the cost of doing business. We were already 2 hours behind schedule because of the train fiasco.
All that to say, I think using an American credit card these days is the least of your concerns. I was surprised to see American Express taken rather much more widely than anticipated. Be careful getting gas though as they place holds on your card for $250 or something like that, and once you get enough holds you can't get any more until the prior ones "roll off".
Had to use debit.
Even more surprisingly to me - a pretty decent chunk of businesses even would accept AmEx. By no means all, but I recall it being basically nonexistent not that long ago.
And to be clear - much of my time was not in areas that get a ton of foreign tourist visitors.
Not saying your experience didn't happen, but given our very different experiences it might be something with your particular bank/issuer/card?
I was slow to try it and it’s great.
There's still an ongoing trick that some European businesses do where they'll try and get you to pay in dollars because they can arbitrarily set the exchange rate. It's obviously within "reason" but on the higher end for no purpose other than to make extra money. I find such behavior to be dishonest and deplorable.
And people do underestimate the complexity of it
Regulation changes "why bother" to "oh crap".
This is the central power lever of the EU and one that is frequently underestimated.
European power projection doesn't work through tanks and aircraft carriers. It works with regulations, trade deals and economic incentives. Remember how a few years ago everyone was scrambling to get GDPR-compliant? That wasn't some random event. That was the EU projecting power.
Why do iPhones have USB-C now? European soft power.
Why are things like Champagne and Prosciutto di Parma protected brands that can only be sold if they're from the actual region? And I mean not just in Europe itself, but everywhere it has deals? Canada, Japan, India, China, Mercosur, etc etc? European soft power.
The EU is playing a different game from the other major players. Not one of brute force, but one of shifting the foundational rules of commerce in their favor. And they're very good at it.
I suspect there's quite a few other things you have to consider when you're managing trillions of dollars of transactions a year. Fraud, settlement times, up times, security, customer service, debt collection, interest rate calculation, reach, KYC, record keeping, legal inquiries.
But I'm sure we're just a couple grok comments away from a competitor
Roughly nobody argues that part is difficult.
> It's not complicated.
It's very complicated, for the reasons that all complex real world systems are. It's an absolute mess.
> Time to do away with these foreign entities.
I don't really mind the "foreign" part, but it's fairly wild that essential financial infrastructure is privatized, so let's!
Hence why crypto hasn't taken off with merchants. Because who's going to pay for merchants to change their point-of-sale systems to accept a new payment method.
Knowing the card will always work 24/7/365 with such a high degree of assurance is a non-zero factor in how well a consumer economy performs.
1. Debit Mastercard/VISA. These are Debit Cards that use the Mastercard/VISA communication system to process transactions. While they are not "Credit" cards because you are using cash in an account that is your money, they rely upon the VISA/Mastercard system and merchants will be charged the Mastercard/VISA fee like a Credit Card.
2. Interac Debit Card. Interac was the first company to offer a debit card type system in Canada, and they are the traditional bank card. These cards use the Interac system (so does eTransfer) and Merchants are charged by Interac for using the system. Its typically less than Mastercard/VISA, which is why you see these "Debit Card only" signs.
3. Mastercard/VISA and Interac hybrid cards. These are newer and combine both Mastercard/VISA and Interac cards in one. The merchant can choose how they want to proceed.
Most of these "Debit" only signs are really saying "Interac only", but because for 30 years Interac was the only provider of Debit cards in Canada, it became the common vernacular to say "Debit" when you mean "Interac".
It’s about the cost of another employee in salary per year for restaurants.
While many other countries employ pay by QR code which is free.
Now most merchants have to work with two companies, visa and mastercard. Want to accept russian MIR cards? Well, in some countries you're not allowed to, and in some, you must, since visa and mastercard don't work there. Now if you add a european company to the mix... whill their cards get accepted in south africa? What about in eg turkey? China? Will whatever indian alternative is get accepted in france?
Currently, with a visa and mastercard, except for maybe russia and iran, you're pretty sure it'll get accepted at least somewhere in any urban area you visit, so you won't be hungry and have somewhere to sleep. If my bank replaces my mastercard with the EU alternative, I won't be that confident about that for quite a few years.
On the other hand, cash is still the king of everything everywhere... somehow some politicians are trying to get rid of that for some reason.
Diners club? Well.. "it depends". Many don't work with it.
Indian, russian, chinese, cards? Maybe in india, russia and china, but you shouldn't expect it to work "everywhere" like visa and mastercard. Same will be true for EU cards for quite a few years, especially if the system gets fragmented into many different companies using many different systems, and you'll always wonder if your german card will get accepted in Algeria like your friends' french card is.
Thankfully, this use case has been solved by Russians themselves.
Just dealing with fraud is a major problem in itself.
We've already got a strong payment processing brand with Interac, it's used daily for millions of debit transactions, and supports all the features you'd expect (in Canada) from a payment card (tap, chip&pin). There's also the MasterCard Debit and Visa Debit branding which seem to bridge debit transactions to the MasterCard and Visa networks. And there's already Interac-capable terminals basically everywhere that Visa and MC are accepted.
My thought is that Interac should launch a credit card brand called "Interac Credit". The actual credit would be via the banks, just like it is with Visa and MC. Interac already has the relationships with merchants and banks to make this happen, and it has the mindshare with consumers to make it successful.
The banks have consistently refused to do anything, because they don't want any change that threatens their oligopoly. Canadian bank services are more or less the same as they were a decade ago.
The current government will have to show that it can resist rich people lobbying in this regard, before any real change can happen.
There are some new banking startups popping up in Canada like Neo Financial (from the guys who made SkipTheDishes) but they are online-only and have limited integration with stuff like Plaid.
Sometimes I feel like they don't actually refuse to do things, maybe they are not capable to improve. Something in their chain of command is broken and doesn't let them change.
Also Interac does not do online transactions outside of some very specific merchants that take Apple/Google Pay transactions. This is how Interac reduces fraud risk, which is why interchange rates for Interac are so low.
A world with a patchwork of payments processing options will look different for travel and business, in some ways worse, but such is life in a "multipolar world" which the Americans elected their leadership to conjure up.
Visa: 1.3% to 2.3% Mastercard: 1.5% to 2.6% Mastercard: 2.3% to 3.5%
Nothing precise as it depends on whether that's debit vs credit cards, and the type of card. Also volume related and what the bank may subsidize, or take on top.
A % of that also goes to the issuing bank*, not to MC/Visa, so I suspect the mentioned 0.2% is talking about what MC/Visa has as their cut.
*: That's also how banks can profitably offer things like cashback.
The low fees are for debt and high for credit cards and VISA/MC won't allow you to accebt only the debt cards
Visa's processes ~$14T in transactions. At 0.2% thats roughly ~$28B in revenue (VISA posted ~$40B in revenue in 2025) versus 2% is $280B in revenue.
EDIT: The 2~3% you're talking is the payment processor fees which get divvy'd out to acquiring processors, acquiring banks, gateways, merchant processing, etc. etc.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-...
> Specifically, the regulation:
> caps interchange fees at 0.2% of the transaction value for consumer debit cards and at 0.3% for consumer credit cards;
There was a recent case of one Serbian company being sanctioned by the USA, and Visa and Master refused to process payments. No big deal, since even a small country like Serbia has its payment system called Dina that kept the company afloat.
There's not a single technical reason for bigger and richer countries to develop their own card payment system. It's not rocket science. The only reason they didn't is their regulators wanted a dependency on the USA payment processors.
There's nothing wrong with having national cards, since >90% of transactions are national anyway. That's how German Girocard worked for decades until the coordinated push to switch to Visa Debit happened.
And the government did nothing to protect domestic payment systems. As if they value foreign dependency more than the independence.
Wero is like a monolith, while EMPSA is more like mobile phone roaming. If I would bet, I would bet on EMPSA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Mobile_Payment_System...
Polish BLIK, which is not even mentioned in the article and which has joined the EuroPA Alliance, processed €83 billion in 2024, with a 30% y/y increase in H1 2025. I understand that BLIK is much older, but it invested significant effort and money in marketing and promotions while delivering a good user experience. BLIK is now trying to expand to Romania and Slovakia, yet Wero is getting all the hype on Hacker News. Maybe this is a case of East, South, and West Europe being treated differently. Is the only “European” solution one that comes from Western Europe?
Wero is basically a rename (and territorial expansion) of the Dutch iDeal system, which processed €141 billion Euros in 2024.
Wero acquired iDeal and integrated it (as well as Payconiq)
Just my pet peeve, but say Central Europe here, not East. Unless of course you mean Ukraine or Kazachstan.
Referring to old Iron Curtain is refueling the animosity of the ancient past.
Point being that with a cheap alternative, it's actually much more convenient now to use a Visa or Mastercard especially with tap to pay because with competition being so high, the diversity means people allow all payments.
My experience is opposite, Now with UPI which 99% of people have access to there is no incentive for people to accept Credit Cards.
Even before UPI credit cards were common accepted online. So I am not sure about that as well.
If in EU a local payment system captures the cash market, then the habit of using digital payments will actually also help Visa and Mastercard make more sale.
I currently don't have a credit card, but when I do, I find paying by a Visa/MasterCard much more preferable than UPI, simply because it's easier by tapping.
https://x.com/moo9000/status/2006304163404128289
The difference this time is that Digital Euro is forced by ECB and control (and deposits) are taken away from banks.
> The core problem has always been fragmentation. Each EU country developed its own domestic payment solution — Bizum in Spain, iDEAL in the Netherlands, Payconiq in Belgium, Girocard in Germany — but none could work across borders. A Belgian consumer buying from a Dutch retailer still needed Visa or Mastercard. National pride and competing banking interests repeatedly sabotaged attempts at unification.
> The network effect compounds the challenge. Merchants accept Visa and Mastercard because consumers carry them. Consumers carry them because merchants accept them. Breaking that loop requires either regulatory force or a critical mass of users large enough to make merchants care — which is precisely what the EuroPA deal attempts to deliver by connecting existing national user bases rather than building from scratch.
It's now been about a month since a White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor openly talked about/advocated for taking Greenland by force. POTUS was vague for a while.
Northern European nations sent like a hundred military officers to Greenland. POTUS then threatened those nations with, wait for it, tariffs.
Then the markets crashed and Rutte/Nato provided a face-saving de-escalation path.
Even Polish banks discourage using debit cards directly and just switch to Blik.
Biggest banks here refused to support Apple Pay and worked hard on legislations to open NFC access. Now we can pay with no fees to Visa/Mastercard or Apple even from our phones.
“Breakup” seems a bit exaggerated considering the % of payment volume which might switch to the new system.
Brazil introduced Pix in 2019, it's now the most used payment method for all transactions nationwide, ahead of both cards & cash.
India introduced UPI in 2016, it now handles >80% of digital payments there, and handles more transactions a day than Visa does worldwide.
It's totally plausible to me that a similar replacement could overtake cards completely within a decade. The lack of cross-border support means "Pay with Bizum" is a niche feature that's only useful in Spain, but if "Pay with Wero" becomes an instant & ~free payment method that works for hundreds of millions of users then it's a very different ballgame.
On the other hand, if you step back a little bit, Russia is currently stuck in a Sovjet civil war, so I don’t think the Kremlin way is that great.
It's not seamless if it includes a war, global isolation, exodus of all business and disconnection of the banks. This means they were left with no alternative, in which case, sure, it's 'seamless' to use the only alternative method.
Europe will have a lot of friction with consumer habits and Visa will always be relevant for buying things from outside EU. These are all competing entities which hate anything that makes them seamlessly lose their business.
Of course, right now nothing can dethrone Visa/MC for international payments, besides perhaps crypto in very limited and often shady scenarios. And Europe can't really do anything about that. But that's a different problem altogether (one that annoys me to no end as a frequent purchaser of digital products from Japan).
Just like I access hacker news by the Internet, not by IP address.
It's about card payment and even if things ending up in your network they first going through visa.
And it's about online payment (PayPal).
no it isn't
for bank to bank payment your statement might be true
but this isn't true for EC card payment and most online payment
_all_ EC cards either use the Visa Payment network and secure modules or the Mastercard one (but by now it's mostly Visa in most places). Sure they have your banks local branding but it's Visa anyway.
This also applies to payment terminal, most (not all) go through the Visa payment network to process payments.
And even in the same country a lot of online payment either goes through credit cards (again mostly Visa in EU) or PayPal. This isn't technically needed at all but due to fragmentation whatever alternative you want to use is just sometimes available.
Which is where Wero comes in:
- try to reduce fragmentation by making it a cooperation across many banks (of which most had their own failed PayPal alternative)
- onboard people on (local) online banking and private Phone2Phone payment (e.g. bill sharing)
- then (now) expand to pushing some payment terminal providers to support it with Phone based payment. There are multiple initiatives for it.
The later part is possible due to 3 reasons:
- payment apps on phone bypassing secure module monopoly nonsense related to EC/Credit cards and visa
- a lot of the in-person checkout systems of small businesses are now a tablet + separate cash register + EC terminal. This means that even if the EC terminal doesn't support Wero the payment system can still do so through their tablet.
- Also I think some of the wider used payment terminal in large EU specific chains can get Wero support with a software update.
Still it's by far not a perfect situation:
- still too much fragmentation/to little adoption by banks
- "old" payment terminals and (physical) checkout systems which are bound to Visa and can't easily be updated
So there most likely won't be a hard break anytime soon, and your EC card will likely continue using Visa secure module and network for a very very long time.
But having a technical working alternative which can slowly start eating market share is already a huge step forward.
With credit cards, they actually claw that money back from the merchant, and then if the merchant can't pay they just eat it themselves.
So the merchant has to work in fraud rates into their pricing, and the credit card company has to work in fraud rates that the merchant can't cover into their rates.
It always seemed toxic it to me that the merchants are the one's responsible, despite the fact that they easily have the least power to do anything about it. But the ease of payment processing, and the number of people who just won't buy it if they can't use a card, outweighs dealing with fraud I guess.
I'm curious how India's UPI handles fraud/refunds, as the system seems to have garnered near-universal praise.
Like, if someone stole a credit card and use it to buy stuff ?
But I honestly don't know many people with a CC here, and those who do (myself included), we don't have the same advantages/disadvantages of a CC: no points, no "free" miles, no interest and no possibility to rack up debt like in the US since Visa automatically deducts the full amount from my bank account at the end of the monthly billing period.
SEPA instant transfers aren't guaranteed instant as they might still be withheld for fraud checks.
Is it really just PayPal left offering a sane online payment service?
---
From https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599074240...:
> It is not possible to use Wero via a web browser or on a computer.
I can send money ONLY to my contacts. It doesn’t allow to type in phone number, one needs to create a contact.
I feel like Europe is just doomed. The stupidity is endless here.
It didn’t work for the amount we needed (over 15k).
Card terminals here in Poland usually accept BLIK payments
It is also very popular payment method in e-commerce
In Czech Republic we have QR payments. They're ok, but could be more streamlined...
Last August US threatened tariffs on Brazil over their Pix system. One of the reasons given was that people using Pix instead of credit cards deprived Visa and Mastercard of fees.
Short-term negative-sum transactionalists are governing the US. Even if November stabilises things somewhat, the cat is probably out of the bag.
Trust comes on foot, but leaves on horseback. _That_ is why a well-integrated EU-based payment system is needed.
There are examples of other co-branded national payment systems out there (troy + Discover comes to mind).
If a European payment system (with cards, at a store) is to exist, then visa/mc will still want a piece of the pie by at least playing along to remain as a co-brand and taking their cuts from international payments.
They didn't just switch. They purchased Discover.
edit: added the "just"
Instead, we are getting a digital euro, a fully dystopian abomination.
But I'm sure there are plenty of villains and idiots that will try (and succeed) in diluting those principles and will get some dystopian (trace everything) version of that.
Earnest question: is the EU really Visa and Mastercard's most profitable market? I would have expected it to be the US, both by customer volume numbers and in terms of regulatory environment (i.e. the US allowing payment processors to take a larger cut).
One not-so-fun fact is that when the US sanctions anyone, their ability to transfer and use money via Visa etc. is taken away. In the modern world, being cut away from even using your debit card is a huge, massive hassle.
It is one of the many different ways being sanctioned makes life more difficult. I can't imagine the US being too keen on giving up those powers.
Developing countries have mostly leapfrogged to total contactless payments.
In South Aast Asia, you typically scan a QR code and approve a payment from your own phone. Far less fraud as a result. Nobody is able to touch your card, you don't have one.
Europe likely identified they better make the jump.
There are benefits to non-QR based payment systems, such as not wanting to pull out your phone, open an app, scan a QR and approve to make a payment that takes me 2 seconds with regular contactless payments.
Physical cards are also a nice fallback to have in cases of running out of battery, theft, etc.
Who returns your money to you if you purchased something on mail order with this, and it turned out to be fraud?
Debit or ATM cards are different. They pull money directly from your account and can exist independently of Visa and Mastercard. For example, some credit unions still issue ATM only debit cards that are not part of the Visa or Mastercard networks.
Europeans use these dispute protections much less, so Visa/Mastercard are mostly seen as expensive pass-throughs.
I've paid numerous time using the swiss counterpart, Twint, in small shops. For some like the farm I used to buy vegetables to it was their only supported payment besides cash because they deemed the card systems too expensive.
The same way chinese tourists can already pay with alipay in many retatail outlets in europe, you can already pay with such european systems on Aliexpress. More are probably comming.
even better, its not public.
Wero are not in the business of issuing cards, though obviously they could get into that business - just like UnionPay did in China. I suspect there would be a lot of inertia there, as card payment fees are capped in Europe anyway.
Granted, the FAQ entry is rather light in details:
https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/39413057671...
Neither are visa/MC for the most part. Mostly debit. ;) this isn’t really about the card anyway but the network behind it.
This is likely to be similar to the existing European payment systems just wider in scope. There are a bunch already it’s just fragmented and country specific. Sepa wero ideal girocard crates bancaires
When did banks actually make that switch?
It must be relatively recent, because I remember not that long ago my credit union ATM card was not part of Mastercard. Now I have a new one and it suddenly has a Mastercard logo.
In Asia you can pay with Alipay in most countries. In South America you can pay QR codes via Mercado Pago (for example).
Or at least make this new system interoperable with the more established players worldwide without the need for a Visa/Mastercard.
1. You first need to install an app (because you want to use tap to pay)
2. Then you need to download another app to authenticate the first app
3. But to set up the 2nd app you need to wait for an actual physical mail which contains a code.
4. Then you set up the 2nd app, but then again it asks for you to do a KYC using your Id Card.
5. Now you need to download another app to do the KYC using your Id, but it asks for another code which you receive by physical mail when you got your Id years ago, but you have no idea where that mail or code is, now you have to request for another code and wait like 2 weeks till you get a physical mail with that code....
.... and the story goes on.
Or, an easy way for vendors or car rental agencies to block a set amount when you rent a car.
However, all of these things can be built and I hope Wero gets the time to grow into a full alternative to US-based payment systems.
Not because I want them to fail, but because this market can use a bit of competition and new ideas.
Probably merchants like Netflix would also love recurring payment functionality. Let's just hope they'll make them cancelable this yime.
The digital euro could be a good candidate here and it also aspires to have cash-like privacy features. It's also mentioned in the article as separate and hopefully non overlapping product.
Just the transaction processing fees going to VISA and Mastercard now would probably pay that back within a few years. Also, we're talking about all or almost-all European countries. So it doesn't sound like that much.
> Low interchange fees under EU regulation make profitability difficult.
Mandating that businesses which accept US credit cards must accept the European payment card would take care of that. Actually, maybe that's not necessary, it's probably enough to mandate that companies making card processing tech which supports US credit cards must also include support for this card; and businesses would just get it with their next system upgrade / terminal replacement or something.
> Consumer habits are deeply entrenched
I 'like' how people are described as "consumers", as though every payment is for consumption.
Anyway, habits are not that deeply entrenched. Didn't people adopt those country-level payment cards? Don't people occasionally change credit cards? It's not even a change of tech, it's just yet another card.
> and neither Visa nor Mastercard will sit idle while Europe tries to dismantle their most profitable market.
Now this may be a significant factor... they could influence politicians, tech solutions makers (with sweetheart deals if they don't support the new payment tech, or whatever), they can get the US government to make some kind of threat (we've already seen the threat to invade Greenland). So, yeah, there's that.
Though at least in Germany we have "girocards/EC-cards" that are not owned by Visa/Mastercard. Some banks are phasing them out in favor of a Visa/Mastercard debit card.
So maybe this is just an attempt to make Wero a bit stronger in comparison to PayPal. AFAIK Wero does not replace a credit card.
The fact that EU sees dependence on American tech in the same way as Russian oil now is saddening and telling.
Americans and American companies had it really good - our tech extracted money from the world, and they were mostly willing to pay for it. And it was an incredible advantage to the US.
But now, it seems that we are happily throwing all that away, for what benefit I do not yet see. Regardless of whether this effort succeeds, why stoke this fire at all?
I would say I hope Americans realize what they’ve done by making their own companies enemies of the world at large, but I’m not holding my breath for any sort of self reflection.
all of this infrastructure Europe claims to want to build will take many many years to realize, particularly at the relaxed European pace. trump will be out of office by the time the EU has held it's fifteenth planning meeting to issue it's first strongly worded letter of intent.
> The Wero app can be installed on any mobile device or tablet running iOS 16 or later, or Android version 9 or later. We recommend updating your device to the latest version of its operating system for maximum performance, convenience and security.
> It is not possible to use Wero via a web browser or on a computer.
Your comment is of course downvoted
It's not as much about replacing Visa/Mastercard, as it is about plastic card technology becoming obsolete, and the duopoly failing to react to the market because of corporate inertia. Had they created a modern online payment system, Wero would never take off.
NASDAQ (NYC) currently runs on software/systems built and maintained by Stockholm-based developers. NASDAQ merged with Swedish OMX in 2008, founded as Optionsmäklarna OM AB in the 80s.
As long as all the other cards still get acceptance, this seems like a great system.
That's exactly the problem. Several actors have won the market of their country, but only of their country.
Will Trump be enough to make the europeans realize that they need to work together, and that an italian win is just as good as a german win?
I agree with you
However that specific example somehow feels off and déjà vu
For someone from france, sure.
For both italians and germans, it matters who wins (and i'm not making a pun here).
/s
Of course, what could go wrong!!
Unbelievable, a chance to make a whole new standard, new system, new everything, but yet we still have the need to tie it to ancient protocols, only to find later it’s broken by design and we start adding all sort of duct tape solutions to make it “secure”..
This is either a completely and entirely stupid move by some boomers living in the 80s, or maybe, it’s intentional to enforce something insecure like a phone number/GSM as a “national ID” to easily track citizens and force them to have a phone number linked to their real life, and I think it’s the second one, the same reason why many “secure” chatting apps still require a phone number.
It's also more convenient than giving out an opaque UUID to your friend to transfer you money or something similar.
The bigger problem I see with this is it being one more service locked exclusively to Android and iOS devices, but it's the same with most currently used banking apps anyways.
After you provide your gov ID
https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/sim-card-regist...
So now this phone number is tied to your gov ID and bank account, amazing design of a single point of failure based on a broken protocol (GSM).
And the SIM registration requirement in nearly every EU country exists for 10 years now - in my case it was as simple as replying with code to operator's message because they had my personal information already for over a decade. There was a grace period after which unregistered SIM cards become dead - the requirement was dubious but you had to comply in order to call, text. There were "solutions" I've bumped on in depths of the Internet but neither felt serious nor safe.
Not to mention that some of the alternatives are owned by a consortium of... European banks.
Visa/Mastercard are the biggest evil. Why do you think Trump got pissed at Brazil having its own payment system without Visa/Mastercard network deleting billions in revenue from Visa/Mastercard
The problem major problem is already mentioned: Each EU country wanna have their own independent system. Nothing prevent the countries from doing that but it must talk within the same payment network so people in the Netherlands can buy from Italy using their own payment system.
Own payment system is different than payment network :)
and you think the EU would want that?