Wero – Digital payment wallet, made in Europe
wero-wallet.eu
wero-wallet.eu
I would LOVE a PayPal alternative, but this is just not it.
--
From https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599074240...:
> It is not possible to use Wero via a web browser or on a computer.
This gets you to utility cost recovery fee structures and sovereignty over your payment infra, versus other countries controlling your value transfer capabilities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_payment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/retail/instant_payments/html/...
Most likely, Wero (like iDEAL) will also support alternative apps for P2P payments.
Also, Wero will support in-store payments in the future, making Google Pay/Apple Pay unnecessary [1] unnecessary, which is a big win.
[1] Strictly spoken it's unnecessary now as well, but then each bank needs to implement its own NFC app and most simply opt foor Google/Apple Pay.
Edit: for some banks it will just forward to the bank's app. So most likely it works as long as your bank supports degoogled Android, similar to how iDEAL + Tikkie works on degoogled Android with most Dutch banks.
> I’m seeing this error message: "Your device does not meet our security requirements".
> /../ If the operating system is an Android variant (also called a 'custom ROM'), such as LineageOS or Pixel Experience, then the wero app can’t be installed for security reasons.
Many European banking apps work on degoogled Android like GrapheneOS or /e/OS fine, as long as you have locked the bootloader and USB debugging disabled.
It’s a difficult thing, we don’t want to have to force smartphone choices but the number of users without one these devices is so vanishingly small it’s very difficult to change the legislation in order to support them too.
I think the happy middle ground is making this system also work with bank issued cards.
Instant payments bypass typical surveillance and fraud systems and so need some kind of authentication, if you don’t want to 2fa every time you’re at the checkout then the application has to have been previously authenticated (e.g setup with some kinda TAN from your bank) and execute on an attested device. We can def extend attestation to other devices (e.g is the kernel modified, does the app have reasonable version and checksums etc) but again, who is gonna fund that for 10 users?
edit: We have a long road to go before this stuff gets better, I think we should be happy at each step instead of really wishing we were already at the finish.
For the same reason, a pure WebAuthn flow in a compliant browser could technically implement secure payment confirmation mandated by the DSP, but afaik no bank does that, and the W3C is still working on the spec.
Our governments can't even manage not to depend on Microsoft/Google/AWS (and Palantir, the US military industrial complex, Israel, ...), our banks are regularly under the fire of extraterritorial bullshit due to the USD dependence.
Being worried about consumer devices and their OS is cute, but it's missing the forest for the trees.
You are missing the point. The issue is that once the "vanishingly small" number of alternatives disappears, users will be completely trapped, and Google and Apple will then free to abuse that position of power (they already do). Worse, since power is centralized, it is very easy for government interference to take place, and we already see that with things such as identity and age verification requirements. It is the possibility of competition that matters more than actual competition.
Your account is from 2021. There were a lot of "Paypal locked my account and all my money is in there" stories at least 10 years before that year.
So YMMV.
The device called "Smartphone" is only used to collect every possible detail about your life. The smart thing on a "Smartphone" is that, besides your bank, a lot of other "vendors" have access (not only) to your financial information.
> I think the happy middle ground is making this system also work with bank issued cards.
That wouldn't let me pay online.
(GrapheneOS does support remote attestation, but the app needs to add their verified boot key fingerprints.)
What i mean is can you use this to pick up a slab of beer in albert hein, or just to transfer some cash to a friend or such?
But instant online iDEAL payments etc. work fine. Person to person payments using Tikkie/betaalverzoek as wel.
Put differently, I never use my bank's web interface, only the phone app.
Though the Sparkasse is the same actually, unsure about the other german banks
From https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599098295... it seems they don't even support phones with developer settings turned on, much less custom ROMs, rooted or jaibroken phones.
> If the operating system is an Android variant (also called a 'custom ROM'), such as LineageOS or Pixel Experience, then the wero app can’t be installed for security reasons.
And yes there should be a web/desktop option. I don't understand why this was made so crap
But with another bank, when I had to install the Wero app, it didn't work at all.
First, SEPA instant payments already exist and are really instant up to a certain amount, and I am guessing that Wero builds on top of that a sort of identity layer, to sidestep the whole IBAN thing. But it is likely more than a SEPA alias, since it was supposedly hard to set-up.
Second, VISA and Mastercard are worldwide payment networks (or rather, they each operate payment networks with various names?). But I am failing to grasp what's hard to reproduce here too. I heard that in Europe there were only a few national alternatives, like Carte Bancaire or Girocard, but why? Is it just because banks can't agree on the design of an alternate network? But all the fees associated with using VISA or Mastercard should be a big enough incentive to push something else. (basically what's a payment network?)
And lastly, why are all the new (free) digital banks (néobanques as we call them here) relying on either Mastercard or VISA and never on Carte Bancaire for example, while it generally offers lower processing fees (and that they can be cobranded).
I think I am missing a lot of context, and I asked LLMs a while ago about these but themselves don't really explain what is the infrastructure needed to operate such a network.
The problem is how do you initiate this payment? Some kind of scannable code or nfc interaction seems to be the missing part. I’d also like to see some kind of physical card also work for those who don’t want or are unable to have an attestable device with them.
You scan it with your banking app and have all the details. But it’s not super seamless. If you find this code on a website on your phone, you have to screenshot the code and load it in the app. Would be nice if there was some kind of deep-link standard.
You're in the Netherlands, and you are going to buy something in an on-line store. Steam perhaps, or any Dutch retailer.
You put the game in your Steam cart, and go to pay. You select Ideal (which Steam provides as an option), you pick your bank, and you follow the on-screen instructions (but you probably do that pretty much automatically). Usually that means scanning a QR code with your bank app on your smartphone where you confirm the amount and recipient, but you can use a physical card reader with your debit card for an OTP to use as well and do it in your bank's online environment in the browser.
That process is what the whole of Europe wants (Wero builds on the Dutch Ideal). It is stupid simple, and once you've used it you don't want to deal with credit cards and bank transfers for buying a thing on-line any more.
That's all there is to it. There is a whole country which already does this, and it works so well everyone wants it. No major US companies needed (big plus these days), and no parasites like Klarna either. Just an easy way to pay a shop using your bank account, just like you use a debit card in physical stores do the same.
There are huge countries (China, India, Brazil, ...) where people moved from cash to mobile payments.
Europe has always been in the forefront of this space, Swish exists since 2012, it's about time we get a pan-European solution.
The only superior aspect of Visa/Mastercard payments is that they are more widely accepted, and that's something that can be changed.
On the other hand Visa and MasterCard are not neutral actors. They have used their market power in the past to pressure merchants to change according to American moral values. And with the current administration I have little faith that this will stay at moral values
Cards are accepted by far more merchants,
The vast majority of Dutch online transactions are done because pretty much every Dutch online shop supports it. Also many international shops through Shopify and Stripe. Many Dutch online shops do not support credit card payments. So iDEAL is the far lower friction option here. And there is no American company in between (at least for most national payments). It's great to see this system, that served us two decades by now finally get rolled out across Europe. They tried it before in the early 2010s, but the non-Dutch banks were fighting turf wars.
2. Even with my Mastercard credit card, the process is still inconvenient. For small purchases, it's fine. But for larger ones, there is an annoying second factor authentication, I have to enter a special password, and the wait to receive an SMS.
3. Visa and Mastercard fees. Most of the time these are paid by the merchant. But sometimes the customer has to pay more if the payment method is credit card. Some places don't accept these at all.
In general iDEAL is simple, secure and convenient. Not only to pay online, but also for example for splitting a bill with friends. I'm very happy to see this being adopted more widely in Europe.
This seems to be mobile-centric system that essentially requires a cell phone, and probably one blessed by Google or Apple. The app will probably leak a huge amount of meta data, far more than a credit card (especially a privacy-oriented prepaid one). This kind of "solution" is dead on arrival as far as I am concerned.
Can confirm. I almost never pay by card because iDEAL is simply much smoother and even many Shopify/Stripe shops offer it as a payment option nowadays. Getting this on all European webshops, for P2P payments (like Tikkie in The Netherlands), and in-store payments is just fantastic.
That's nice for ideal users, but Wero here in Germany is completely exclusive to mobile banking apps.
I have yet to see any actual confirmation in any way that ideal will keep the alternative web based payment once they fully merge with Wero. On the one hand, EPI never puts out any concrete info, on the other hand no Journalist ever seems to ask EPI representatives the important questions.
Plastic cards are yesterday's battle, many national schemes exist in large European countries (CB in France, Girocard in Germany, ...) and would be hard to overhaul.
Focusing on mobile payments makes sense. Once a critical mass is reached (Austria, Benelux, France, Germany) there's a clear incentive for other players to work on interoperability, even if the pricing structure might be very different.
On the other hand, there's a significant chunk of the population that just pays using their mobile phone. They don't care about cards, numbers (which are going to disappear anyway), or the legacy infrastructure behind that.
For decades, european countries like Netherlands or German had cheaper alternatives, e.g. in Germany the old "EC Card" and now "girocard". That costs a shop just a fixed amount of cent... and a very low amount.
(That is BTW one of THE reasons why US travellers won't see "Credit cards accepted" in every store ... our alternatives are just cheaper, so the market decided)
Also, Visa and Mastercard as US companies. So they are sniffing on all european transactions.
And it happened more than once that US companies tried to execute bullshit US laws in Europe. Example: there was once an german online shop that sold cuban cigars. Eventually the US website that hosted the shop said "Oh, that's not allowed" --- despite it perfectly legal by german law. And they didn't just delete this cuban cigars, they disabled the whole shop, with IIRC 20000 EUR positive balance. And the shop owner didn't even get his money, since their customer service sucked and was only automated response and untrained indian call center clerks.
So no, we cannot really depend on US services. They are expensive, they customer service sucks, they are sniffing either directly or let the NSA sniff everything.
And, bank-wise the USA seems to be some decades back (not online-bank-wise!). I mean, they still have pay cheques? Not direct bank transfers? Shudder. No wonder that, if they have no alternatives, they think everything must be Visa or Mastercard operated.
EU local payments already work instantly and feeless in many countries through SEPA. Lot of these countries are already on trajectory to gradually get off visa/mastercard for domestic payments as every ecommerce store pushes SEPA as the default payment to save on fees.
The same way AliPay can be used in most Asian countries already, we can imagine a world where EPI, UPI, Pix and so on interoperate smoothly.
I assume Visa and MC will try to remain walled off as the US are a big and slow mover in this space, until they'll need to open up as well.
Note: payments (unlike transfers) are never really zero fees, for good reasons.
The only entities that need/want "instant, non-recourse payments" are fraudsters.
https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/37991694065...
I hope we'll get there soon.
It is very similar to many other mobile money systems. What make it different is that it is pan European
Taler is about moving money without necessarily using a bank account
Once Wero becomes usable in Austria, France, Germany, Benelux, and interoperable with those, the few remaining players will have a strong incentive to join.
Holefully more providers will pop up in the years to come.
KYC, proprietary, part of a broader strategy of having Europeans rely more on banks and digital id: https://epicompany.eu/
I'll pass.
Lightning will come to the rescue.
Especially these parts:
> The cooperation builds on the success of existing solutions, connecting them via a central hub to create a truly pan-European experience for cross-border payments.
> European consumers will continue using their current preferred solution, now with broader European reach
> The cooperation is based on a central interoperability hub, operated by a future central entity jointly established by the partners.
So it is unlikely that Wero will be the single solution for entire Europe. Instead it is one of many solutions that hopefully will interoperate in the future. But we are still in the MoU phase only, so lets see what happens...
Wero, RuPay, WeChat Pay / AliPay, Crypto (through 3p like coinbase or directly), etc.
And handles them in nice and unified API, with hooks for subscriptions, etc. (taking into account that some payment methods do not support recurring payments, so there should be some hook to send an email to the customer to renew manually, etc.)
Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46958399 - February 2026 (1020 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46963089 (Wero subthread)
Kinda odd that their marketing does nothing to clarify this...
It’s not great, but it’s not bad either.
I wonder if there will be interoperability between them, that would be pretty sweet
Basically it's a swish/ideal etc equivalent for the entire EU.
I don’t imagine that’s so very hard to implement later though.
Wero is an initiative from a group of European banks united in EPI (European Payment Initiative). The tech is partially based on the Dutch iDEAL (which EPI acquired a few years ago).
iDEAL has been around in The Netherlands for 20 years and is used for most Dutch online payments (also supported by Shopify and Stripe) and P2P payments through Tikkie/betaalverzoek. The whole system is really nice and smooth and definitely much nicer than PayPal in many ways. Almost no online stores use Paypal here because iDEAL works so well.
Given this history and the iDEAL people working there, I'm sure Wero will be fine after a few iterations.
That's good to know that Wero for online shops is "just" iDEAL rebranded, that was news to me. There is an info page here: https://sowieso.wero-wallet.eu/nl-en/consumer
And I've always wondered, isn't it kind of unsafe, if someone gets my number, they can learn where I store my money and what my name is.
Dunno about the desktop, but if you're on a phone, there's often a button "open in the bank app". I actually like that you need to approve it in the banking app, it's like a single source of truth no one else but me has access to. Dunno why it would be "way slower", it's just an additional click?
It's not possible to register the same phone number (or email) at two banks simultaneously. The last registration wins and the associated bank account will switch on the backend when you try this.
Also, EU bureaucrats have little to do with it. Wero is the third attempt by a subset of private European banks to establish a new pan-European payment network.
[1] https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599201237...
Don't we already have SEPA transfers? What benefits would this add? Why are they completely unable to pitch it to someone who's curious and receptive to the idea?
Pan-European payments are the bigger deal.
In most cases, you can't pay a merchant using a bank transfer. Businesses and consumers need payment systems. This is not particularly hard to grasp.
You're right that it's a bit confusing, as Wero's marketing is mostly focused on P2P transfer usecases, ie like US's Venmo/Cashapp, which as you note we can already do with SEPA transfers. Wero does have a small benefit in that case, as it's slightly more secure (you don't need to share your bank account, and there's a dedicated app that most Western Europeans will soon be familiar with).
The bigger benefit I think is as a unified e-commerce solution. While Wero is not directly an EU initiative, it's still supported by the EU commission. In general a good thing to keep in mind when evaluating EU financial/economic news is that one of the main things the EU tries to do is strengthen and protect their "single market": they want to make the flow of commerce within EUs borders as seamless as possible.
Having a unified ecommerce payment solution, so that you can eg just as easily order goods from German webshops as a Frenchman as you can from a French one (barring shipping etc) is in the EUs interest. Of course it's also in the banks that put forward this initiative's interest.
But, speaking as a consumer: this rules! iDeal is really nice, much nicer to use than credit cards or PayPal imo. I think it's easy to see why you would prefer a dedicated payment system in ecommerce rather than plain SEPA transfers (which most shops don't support) or credit cards, but in case that's not clear:
- Faster checkouts
- Don't need to share bank account numbers/sensitive credit card info
- Fees are much lower than credit cards (at least for iDeal its fractions of a cent per transaction: https://ideal.nl/en/ideal-fees)
- (Coming) built in support for subscriptions
Hope that gave a bit of an idea!
I hope it works well for visitors and recent immigrants. It can be surprisingly hard to open a bank account in your first few months in Germany, and I hope it won't leave people out of that new infrastructure.
Let's see how it goes!
The fact that this is shown as a « big step forward » is a a great example of how much the EU is lagging behind. It’s honestly quite sad.
Anyway, let’s wait and see, I already used Wero, it works OK, I don’t really get what the difference is between this and instant bank transfers but again, let’s wait and see.