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Comment by sunaookami | Hacker News Reader

The problems with Wero is that it needs a linked phone number and nobody can answer what happens if you link two bank accounts from different banks to the same phone number (is this even supported? Why do I NEED to link my phone number?). Also, every bank needs to manually support Wero and when you want to pay online you need to scan a QR code with your phone (yes even on your desktop) and approve it inside your banking app which makes it way slower than just using PayPal or Google/Apple Pay. It's astounding how EU bureaucrats came up with "PayPal but worse" over 25 years after PayPal was founded.

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A phone number (or email) is not strictly necessary [1]. Some banks do indeed require it for the Wero account setup, which in my opinion is a mistake. You only need the additional identifiers if you want to look up other Wero users using your phone's address book to send money P2P without using a QR code.

It's not possible to register the same phone number (or email) at two banks simultaneously. The last registration wins and the associated bank account will switch on the backend when you try this.

Also, EU bureaucrats have little to do with it. Wero is the third attempt by a subset of private European banks to establish a new pan-European payment network.

[1] https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599201237...

EU bureaucrats have nothing to do with this. They are pushing the Digital Euro instead.

Wero is an initiative from a group of European banks united in EPI (European Payment Initiative). The tech is partially based on the Dutch iDEAL (which EPI acquired a few years ago).

iDEAL has been around in The Netherlands for 20 years and is used for most Dutch online payments (also supported by Shopify and Stripe) and P2P payments through Tikkie/betaalverzoek. The whole system is really nice and smooth and definitely much nicer than PayPal in many ways. Almost no online stores use Paypal here because iDEAL works so well.

Given this history and the iDEAL people working there, I'm sure Wero will be fine after a few iterations.

EPI are still EU bureaucrats ;) They are supported by the ECB and EU Commission and the ECB also pushes for the digital euro.

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

Here where I live a similar thing exists for like 10 years already, and if the recepient has 2 bank accounts from different banks, then the banking app lets you choose which bank you want to send the money to. They also show the recipient's first and middle names (only the first letter of the last name is shown) to make sure you're sending money to the right person.

And I've always wondered, isn't it kind of unsafe, if someone gets my number, they can learn where I store my money and what my name is.

Dunno about the desktop, but if you're on a phone, there's often a button "open in the bank app". I actually like that you need to approve it in the banking app, it's like a single source of truth no one else but me has access to. Dunno why it would be "way slower", it's just an additional click?

For me, linking the phone number was optional, I had to choose either phone and/or email.

phone number was a poor choice, agreed. Identifier should just be some guid attached to your bank account of choice and you get one for every device / card.

I don’t imagine that’s so very hard to implement later though.

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