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Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

Wero is basically an EU-wide version of the Dutch iDeal system, which in my opinion is the gold standard of how internet payment should work. I shouldn't have to fill in any card numbers on the site of the merchant (which is unsafe). Instead, the payment should redirect me to my bank, where I authorize the payment through my own bank's security system. I've always been annoyed by the need to type in sensitive card info on all sorts of merchant sites. I hope that with EU-wide use, Wero will receive much broader support now.

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PIX from Brazil is even better, to be honest. But this is a big improvement over online CC payment.

I lived in the NL and Brazil, so I can compare the two, and while iDEAL is pretty good, PIX is easier to understand, explain, and deal with.

PIX has more variants, you can use it for recurrent payment, split payments, financing, cashout and almost all things a CC can do nowadays.

I would say Tikkie is almost as good and easy to use as PIX usecase wise but has less adoption and variants, also it belongs to ABN which is completely different from PIX approach.

PIX is also better because it gives control back to the central bank (as it was with cash) and not private industry although they are providing the service. The central bank controls what payments are permitted by what laws exist, not some risk management system that has decided that your legal purchase is too risky or some foreign state has applied sanctions against you.

That sounds a little authoritarian for many Western countries, I imagine.

I guess it comes down to who you would trust more - your own government which you have some control over via elections or some (potentially multinational) corporation which you have exactly zero control over?

It's the other way around. You have choice with a company, and people can switch provider very quickly if they are bad. You have very, very coarse-grained control with the government every few years.

I've moved countries five times in my life. I still haven't been able to fully get rid of my dependency on Big Tech or the Visa/Mastercard duopoly.

In the context of mastercard and visa being a duopoly and the recent debacle such as certain games being removed from steam because they threatened to not allow stream to use the card payment system, it's a pretty bad take.

Not that central bank won't be able to do the same, but it would have to follow laws set by the government rather than law+whatever the card companies decide to.

Agree to disagree. Lock-in is a thing that companies design for.

And a government is pre-locked in.

Ok, I choose to not use Visa/Mastercard in the US, and I want to subscribe to some saas. What do I do now? Or do you mean "choice" as in "you can always choose not the breathe or eat"?

To be pedantic American Express and Discover exist.

But I agree with your meaning. We are beholden to some third party no matter how we move in the current situation.

Amex is regularly rejected by businesses and cannot be your only credit card, so really you maybe have Discover.

I also wouldn’t say either of those is particularly better than Visa/Mastercard. They all engage in the same practices more or less

The only places I've found that refuse AMEX are very small mom and pop operations. And of those, many don't accept cards of any type: cash only.

Fair enough, it's probably not as common as I think and is more of a reputation.

Costco?

[Edit] -- And I've frequented several independent coffee shops that are cashless.

Costco doesn't even accept Mastercard (credit cards), so they're kind of a unique case here where they intentionally choose to only accept one particular type of credit cards.

Guessing they have their own branded card that they push you to use?

Correct, and it used to be AMEX.

Why is this downvoted? While slightly sarcastic, you make a good point.

Is it possible to get a UnionPay (China) or JCB (Japan) credit card issued by a European bank? That would be very interesting. I assume in the last 10 years, there is way more acceptance of UnionPay in Europe. UnionPay is widely accepted all over East and South East Asia these days because there are so many Chinese tourists.

I've found it funny how many people still believe that most places in the US don't take Discover. I almost exclusively use my Discover card and the number of times I've had it declined is a tiny fraction of a percent. Most people also don't seem to realize that Discover is also a bank, so you can use it for both credit and checking/savings. So yeah, you likely don't have to be forced to use the duopoly of Visa and Mastercard. The only time I've recently used one of my Visa cards was when I visited Europe where I found much more places don't accept Discover, although there were still many that did.

Hopefully the acquisition of Discover by Capital One results in lower processing fees so the network broadens globally and makes the notion that Discover isn't viable a thing of the past.

You only have a potential choice until a company buys out all its competitors and surpresses the rest.

> You have choice with a company, and people can switch provider very quickly if they are bad.

There are exactly two companies in the global credit card market and they operate in lockstep, literally coming to agreements to shut down legal businesses together. Visa and MasterCard have absolutely no right to determine who is and isn't allowed to receive payment. Governments have that right, but that doesn't mean they should use it -- if they're abusing that right, people can vote them out. The effectiveness of people voting out harmful politicians is another matter, but that's kind of on the people being bad at voting, not the idea of government altogether, and at any rate you have no vote whatsoever in what MC/Visa do (unless you vote for government to regulate them!).

> You have choice with a company,

This is wrong for a large share of the companies that most people deal with on a daily basis. And that share has been steadily increasing every single year.

Like others said that choice is not really given in this case.

Also with the government option it wouldn’t mean that you can’t still use other methods - for example in brasil credit card or cash work just fine, PIX is just one (very convenient) option.

Do corner stores (small informal convenience stores) in Brasil usually accept PIX? I assume they all cash-only.

Also: What is PIX uptake/penetration like in the countryside? China is shocking how fast that countryside wet/farmer's markets started accepting AliPay. Literally, you can buy a kilo of pumpkin (namguo) using nothing but your mobile phone with AliPay, and the old lady running the stand (in a wet market) probably has a 6th grade education. (No hate on that!)

In Africa they've had this since ~2005 with the Mpesa system. It basically transfers cellphone credits as payment. In certain regions everyone with a dumb phone was hooked up and you could do anything from buy a coconut from a guy on the side of the road to pay your taxi driver to pay at the supermarket.

Wow, this is a great reply! "In Africa" -> Can you share a few countries? Google tells me that East Africa is the biggest users: Kenya, Tanzania, etc. (No hate on the use of "In Africa here"... as Google tells me it is used in at least 10 different African countries.)

Anywhere that MTN (telecom provider) operates. East and southern Africa mostly.

(Brazilian here).

> Do corner stores (small informal convenience stores) in Brasil usually accept PIX? I assume they all cash-only.

Pretty much every single one I've always been to. From the smallest one-person street corner popup shop to the biggest shopping mall boutique and outlets, virtually everyone accepts PIX payments. Its just better - its one of those "you gotta use it to understand" things.

Anecdotally: I've even gave some cash to homeless people on occasion using PIX. This may seem weird, but in Brazil, you must have a bank account to be able to subscribe to any sort of government benefits, and since its free, pretty much everyone has an account and therefore can receive PIX payments. Its also safer, since you're not carrying cash with you, and even if you're somehow forced to transfer, there are ways to monitor and reverse transactions (so called MED).

https://www.bcb.gov.br/estabilidadefinanceira/pix-seguranca

Of course, there's been a few incidents over the years where some concerned citizens would not accept PIX payments because "the government will know what you're spending on" (in contrast to, say, credit card operators, where apparently the "right people" would know what you're spending on...).

There are some criticisms of the current system, which is fair, but most that I have heard are ideological in nature or some sort of foreign defaultism.

Replying here to throwaway2037 because I can't reply directly to him, but yes, even most informal businesses accept PIX, including some random guy selling candy or bottled water at a stop signal.

The only exception I have found to consistently refuse PIX are some parking lots, and they refuse credit cards as well, accepting only cash, probably to hide their earnings.

> You have choice with a company, and people can switch provider very quickly

Oh yeah?

Please enlihhten me, how exactly can I switch providers from the Visa/Mastercard duopoly?

Duopoly is bad. We should work to fix that. A monopoly is worse.

Theres a natural tension here, because in order for this to be true you need a diverse market with many competitors. But that is bad usually, because it's extremely inefficient, so it gets optimized out. The monopolies we see are indeed an optimization - the natural climax of a developing market.

Consider payments: you do not want to carry around 100 different cards and trinkets just to pay for things in your daily life, right? And for merchants, they do not want to make deals with 100 different companies to accept payments, right? So what's the end result?

We see the monopolies in the US economy because our economy is very efficient. It could be even more efficient - consider, for example, how much time and money could be saved if only one phone OS existed.

But then of course that's bad for you, the consumer, because then these huge corporations rule your life and can essentially do whatever they want.

I trust my government (Switzerland) way more to do the thing that is right for the people and the law then some private company that has the primary goal of making money. It doesn't mean that governments don't make mistakes but the primary goal is to serve its people.

That is what government is for in a functioning democracy. A functioning government is of the people for the people.

> I trust my government (Switzerland)

I do, too. I’m not sure I trust Brussels.

I certainly trust the EU a lot more than I trust US corporations.

Considering the head of EZB is a convicted criminal with, lets call it interesting, letters to the convicted criminal Sarkozy I am not sure what is plague and what cholera.

Taken into account than of two convicted criminals, Sarkozy went to prison and will probably be sent there again, whereas Trump is running a big country, I'm pretty sure which is which.

Lagarde is not a convicted criminal. She was convicted for negligence, but this is not a criminal conviction.

Lets see. Gerhard Schroeder, fled to RU. Nicolas Sarkozy, convicted. Silvio Berlusconi, convicted. Geert Wilders, convicted. Slobodan Milošević, convicted. Jean-Marie Le Pen, convicted. Marine Le Pen, convicted.

Donald Trump, convicted (pardoned everyone who attempted a coup on Jan 6 2021).

Victor Orban, surely he'll get convicted.

Benjamin N., Vladimir P.: wanted by ICC.

(This excludes cases like Jan Maršálek / Wirecard fraud / GRU spy. Also, have a peak at all the cleaning Zelenski's government had to do, including in his inner circle.)

Seems we in Europe at least are attempting to uphold the rule of law. I can't say the same for US corporations or US government, given the current administration. That being said... can we stop voting for these narcissistic criminals? Thank you in advance.

I met Mr Schröder on Saturday in the Opera. I can therefore vouch that he is not in Russia.

> attempted a coup

funny everyone forgot to bring guns for the coup

Having seen some of the footage, that is the oddest coup attempt I've ever seen. Wasn't the only violence a police officer shooting a woman climbing into a window?

I even trust EU more than the local corrupt country governments.

Oh, 100%. But the choice here is between European banks and a state-run Pix equivalent.

Do they deserve your trust?

The government? Either the national government or the EU get legitimacy by being democratic instructions. That doesn't mean they get blind faith, it is healthy to scrutinize their actions.

US corporations on the other hand get only my contempt and scorn.

I hope I get to live in such a place some day.

[flagged]

Dang has stated these sorts of comments do not belong on HN news. Discussion of specifics are fine, but nationalist slurs are not.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48100358

Edit: wow, my bad. HN really loves low effort nationalistic slurs as entire comments now.

What's the slur here? American? Mind?

I'm American, and I wasn't offended. Because it's true, we actually can't comprehend this because we are the poster child of government via huge corporations. We literally don't know what it's like to have a functioning and trustworthy government handling these things, it's completely foreign to us.

It's a joke but Visa and Mastercard are American corporations so Americans can feel relatively secure using them. If you live in another developed country, relying on the whims of American entities feels less secure than something subject to the laws of your own country.

American consumers have no democratic control of that duopoly either.

To be fair both are publicly traded and owning shares would give you voting rights.

Point is: traded companies function like a democracy in which money is a vote, which is the opposite of democracy.

this doesn’t sound reassuring. there is not a nationality test on buying shares

They're protected by the laws of their country. Foreigners aren't. That's the point.

Americans corporations have shown they'll just pull out of countries if the law comes down on them too hard.

Americans are pretty aware that government by large, multinational, unaccountable corporations sucks and has basically all of the downsides of big government without any of the accountability upsides.

American media may be less likely to share that narrative with you. But the actual people figured this out a while ago and they're mad.

If I had the Swiss government instead of the US Federal Government I'd trust it a lot more too.

I assume the concern is more about moving to mandated digital currency where every transaction is tracked by the government, no cash allowed.

Trust Switzerland? Protonmail is literally fleeing Switzerland. You now have to upload Government ID to use any online service with more than 5k users!! They are also now requiring backdoors (Article 50a). Literally the end of privacy!

It's honestly depressing no one talks about this, or even knows about this.

Brazil is on the West, fyi.

The new alignment isnt East vs West... But North vs Global South, which Brazil sees itself a part of the South.

???

Wrong thread?

The comment I see reads like this:

"That sounds a little authoritarian for many Western countries, I imagine."

Yeah the concept of "Western" is a relic of the Cold war, just like Western Europe / Eastern Europe ( past some countries being genuinely there ) It's still taught like that to younger people, but definitely shouldn't.

> The new alignment isnt East vs West... But North vs Global South, which Brazil sees itself a part of the South.

Where's Russia and Australia then?

And Cuba was in the West during the Cold war. We knew what East vs West meant, it's more a figurative phrase than anything.

Today's alignment is shaping up to be North and South. Not quite 'versus' like the Cold war was.

on the West of what? Culturally and historically it's a Western country, yes, but politically and economically it's an Eastern country – founding member of BRICS and a developing economy. I think the author of the parent comment used "Western" term referring to ideological and economic grouping

I think the idea of what’s authoritarian sounding is more of a cultural/historical/ideological distinction, not something that would naturally map to an economic label like BRICS.

Also Western and Eastern are just labels in this context, not opposite directions, even if Brazil was “not Western” in some way, it wouldn’t make sense to call it Eastern.

>on the West of what?

On the West of every single country in Europe, to start with.

Don't take this the wrong way, but have you looked at a world map? I ask since a significant chunk of people from the US cannot find Mexico on a map ...

Aside from its very evident geographic location, Brazil was the site of the first lasting European colony in the Americas established by Portugal.

People in Brazil speak Portuguese[1], a Romance language derived from Latin and closely related to Spanish, French and Italian.

The genetic lineages most commonly found within the Brazilian population include Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, German, and to a much lesser degree but still significant, Lebanese and Turkish [2].

The top countries whose citizens visit Brazil as tourists are overwhelmingly from the Americas and Europe: Argentina, the USA, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, France, Portugal, Germany, Italy and the UK.

Likewise, when Brazilians travel abroad, their main destinations are Argentina, the USA, Chile, Portugal, France, Italy, Uruguay, the Caribbean, Spain and the UK.

Share of exports to Asia: ~41%

Share of exports to the Americas and Europe combined: ~47%

Share of imports from Asia: ~43%

Share of imports from the Americas and Europe combined: ~50%

How could one reach the conclussion that Brazil is an "Eastern" country? Oh yeah, they joined a trade organization with China and Russia ... sure, they must be Eastern now.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_language

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_Brazil

    > I ask since a significant chunk of people from the US cannot find Mexico on a map ...

I love these comments. Don't worry: A "significant chunk of people" from Europe also cannot find Mexico on a map. Really, these comments say nothing. They are like "man on the street with a microphone" gotchas. Anybody under 30 years old has a mobile phone with Internet: They open their maps app, and search for Mexico. Done: Borders the southwestern United States.

> very evident geographic location

I agree that Brazil is Western, because it obviously is; it's a former European colony that speaks a European language and has European religious and cultural values. But geography has nothing to do with the concept of "Westernness", beyond historical etymology. Australia and New Zealand are as much part of "the West" as Canada is.

i recently got interviewed by company in the UK. The Operations Chief thought Mexico was in Spain... jeez.

West is just the US nowadays.

I would say West is Europe, Japan and a few others. But I think I need a new word for that one.

Ehh, I live in Europe. Moving forward I don't think it makes sense to bundle it with the US, who is like the biggest threat to the EU, considering the past few years.

That was said exactly when that guy first came years ago. I'll bet my money ( via Wero or not ) the whole movement will be shattered by an " European-friendly " governement. Perhaps private companies will still retain a bad sentiment, who knows, everything else will be business as usual.

I don't know. Things feel meaningfully different this time around.

The West is UK, Western Europe, Australia, Canada, US, Scandinavia. I agree that Japan is a really interesting one that shares a lot with the West, but doesn't have the same cultural roots. I wouldn't be opposed if they wanted to be counted as part of the West, but I don't know if they would.

> That sounds a little authoritarian for many Western countries, I imagine.

If you ever had your account blocked by Apple or Google, you know exactly why a government is the better option. At least you have the rule of law on your side.

Big companies are the authoritarian situation, not the government.

It deems to me that the rule of law is easier to apply to third parties than to the government that is in charge of administering it

This reminds me of how all the drug dealers use USPS because it actually requires a warrant to open the package.

If the government has to enforce banking KYC/AML itself they won't be able to hide behind all the third party fuck-fuck games and they'll get sued into oblivion. I'm sure they'll play the normal federal court and sovereign fuck-fuck games but it would be glorious trying to watch them try to enforce the BSA and Patriot act bullshit while not being able to hide behind the auspice it's just a private bank collecting the data.

Not if your government properly implements separation of powers, as is the case in most Western countries.

Yes, I'm aware someone is trying to undermine it in the U.S. currently. That doesn't mean that companies are a safe haven suddenly.

Separation of powers is easy to erode and we are seeing that happening in a lot of western countries. Companies are, of course, never going to be trustworthy, but they at least can go out of business if they go full dystopian.

So how many user accounts should Apple or Google wrongfully close until they go out of business? 1000? 10,000? ...

The actual separation of powers that's a good idea is that between governments and companies.

in some countries you can vote for your government and hold it accountable.

And your vote basically counts for nothing.

Until such governements have already loopholes to circumvent rules of law, I'm as sad as the next guy but the EU technically has that.

The choice is between the ECB and visa/mastercard (who are de-facto controlled by the US government).

It's a shit situation we're in, but the ECB seems like the lesser evil.

Especially now in the (former) USA.

Wero is run by the banks themselves, which are in turn controlled/restricted by the central bank. I don't think there's a meaningful difference on that front.

The European ECB isn't really in a position to directly offer services to people, and relying on every country's central banks to cooperate will take decades.

The difference is clearly that banks have a different agenda from central banks.

SWIFT is a cooperative of banks also but it seems that some central banks endeavours are better. BTW Argentina created an innovation back in the early 2000s as a product of a crisis. It was implemented in record time and transfers were immediate back then and improving. It's not run by the central banks though.

Bit like Moldova automating government because there simply was no money for armies of overpaid burocrates.

The central bank is governed by a direct mandate from the government (and, effectively, the entire population, when dealing with a democracy). Commercial and investment banks are beholden to their board and shareholders. There's a clear conflict of interest in trying to dump a service that should be available to everyone onto a business with narrower concerns.

I have been using iDeal for many years now and have yet to see any of the downsides of it being a product of a commercial bank.

Perhaps it's a difference in banking culture between different countries; I would certainly not put the same trust and faith in a Wero alternative set up by American banks, that's for sure.

Banks are beholden to policy from the central bank and financial authorities. Payment fees are capped, payment processing terms aren't a free-for all, and the power of individual banks is kept in check. The people doe have a voice in all of this, just not in the direct implementation process.

You cannot do a chargeback on iDeal, but I don't think that is related to it being a product of commercial banks.

The American companies Mastercard and Visa are subject to American rule of law. In the case of a criminal or authoritarian president, such is an issue. You can see how Russian assets got frozen and SWIFT stopped working for Russia after they did the full scale invasion of Ukraine.

Should the USA invade Greenland, they could stop bank payments done via Mastercard or Visa networks.

So for sovereignty, we are better off without USA. We should also transfer our gold and other assets out of USA, since the country is moving towards fascism.

Imagine old Europe counting their own beans. The level of absurdity to outsource it to whomever...

> You cannot do a chargeback on iDeal,

Odd. How is a transaction reversed after a dispute?

You can't do that with an iDeal transaction. And it is a reason I (European, preferably using European products) often go for a debitcard instead, using Visa/MC... that, or PayPal. But if you have too many disputes on PayPal, they'll simply close your account.

Wait until you see that ECB is shared between European states central banks that themselves shared between each country commercial banks

The ECB is directly governed by European Union law. Its capital stock, worth €11 billion, is owned by all 27 central banks of the EU member states as shareholders.[6] The initial capital allocation key was determined in 1998 on the basis of the states' population and GDP, but the capital key has been readjusted since.[6] Shares in the ECB are not transferable and cannot be used as collateral.

-- Italian Central bank As of early 2024, the 15 largest shareholders represented slightly over half of the bank's equity, namely UniCredit (5.0 percent), Cassa nazionale di previdenza ed assistenza per gli ingegneri ed architetti liberi professionisti [it] (4.9 percent), Fondazione ENPAM [it] (4.9 percent), Cassa nazionale di previdenza e assistenza forense [it] (4.9 percent), Intesa Sanpaolo (4.9 percent), Cassa nazionale di previdenza e assistenza dei dottori commercialisti [it] (3.7 percent), BPER Banca (3.3 percent), ICCREA Banca (3.1 percent), Generali Italia (3.0 percent), the National Institute for Social Security (3.0 percent), Istituto nazionale per l'assicurazione contro gli infortuni sul lavoro (3.0 percent), Cassa di Sovvenzioni e Risparmio fra il Personale della Banca d'Italia [it] (3.0 percent), Cassa di Risparmio di Asti (3.0 percent), Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (2.8 percent), and Crédit Agricole Italia (2.8 percent). The remaining 49 percent were dispersed among 157 shareholders, mainly banks and banking foundations.[49]

And that's the whole reason why Wero has been made I think. It's because the ECB wants to advance on their digital euro plans due to sovereignty concerns, and I think this push is to dismiss that argument.

> The central bank controls what payments are permitted by what laws exist, not some risk management system that has decided that your legal purchase is too risky or some foreign state has applied sanctions against you.

That sounds worse to be honest. You're essentially asking for the government to be not only aware of but also able to control all digital payments. That upends how money has worked over (literally) millenia, and is an incredible risk to take. Giving someone in government the ability to block someone's payments and trusting they won't abuse it might be fine as long as good people remain in power, but do you really want to bet the entire nation's ability to live life on that?

Furthermore, wouldn't determining if a payment is legal require prying into details of the transaction that may violate your privacy? And if they make an incorrect determination based on stuff that really wasn't their business in the first place, they now have the force of government behind them, going far beyond merely declining the transaction.

I would think what you should want to advocate for is a system that cannot block payments (at least domestically) just like with cash, and enforcement either happens prior to enrollment, or after the fact through some other traditional law enforcement mechanism (warrants, etc.).

Not intending to defend either system but private financial institutions basically end up deputized as enforcement arms of anti money laundering and sanctions in the US and probably other countries where the payments systems are privatized. That's a why every bank has a big compliance department - the laws say a lot about who and what they can serve and they have to be on top of it.

Which yes means sometimes legit transactions that match rules meant to catch money laundering and other shady business get blocked or flagged. Sometimes out of avoidance of legal risk, rather than actual certainly anything illegal is happening.

I don't know if the centralized government implementation would be any better in that regard, but at least you could complain to the government instead of having a bank hide behind a law they didn't write but have to enforce.

You're right that politicians can pressure private financial institutions into cutting off anyone they don't like. For example Operation Choke Point [1] which cut off legal-but-scandalous businesses' access to the financial system, and getting WikiLeaks debanked for publishing material that made the government look bad.

But some might see that as a sign you need more separation between the state and payment networks, rather than less.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

I think the ideal would be private banks enforcing exact legal rules (no fuzzy matches) and forwarding edge cases to the authorities (but not blocking them). All with transparency.

You don't want private banks in the business of fuzzy-matching (because they'll default to over-cautious, and it empowers the government to exploit grey areas to pressure them).

And you don't want the executive arm of the government too involved in day-to-day financial inspection (because executive can move at the speed of an edict, versus needing a law).

> Not intending to defend either system but private financial institutions basically end up deputized as enforcement arms of anti money laundering and sanctions in the US and probably other countries where the payments systems are privatized.

I feel like people get so distracted by the problems they see with the existing system that they completely miss just how much more dangerous things could get in a centralized government system. For example:

- The current system is distributed and does not let any central entity make the unilateral decision to block any given transaction. Even if you think of banks as deputies of the government, they still differ in how they evaluate and respond to risks, and you have some ability to go to alternative institutions when one of them is wrong. This isn't speculation, it's a fact that already plays out on a daily basis. You cannot do that with your government.

- Flagging a transaction is so incredibly different from blocking it. Flagging is surveillance, blocking is enforcement. It's one thing to get suspicious why I'm getting food at a particular vendor and demand that I explain myself afterward; it's a whole 'nother thing to remotely block me from getting it in the first place.

- Scalability matters. Letting the government be the middleman for all transactions lets the person at the controls block five transactions nearly just as easily as five million of them. Surveillance can get bad enough, yes, but do you really want to give them that much pre-judicial enforcement power too? Because they literally do not have that power currently.

- We had a live demo of what happens when government maintains a record of financial transactions (see the IRS and tax records). Play out what would've happened against a bank - would it have been worse?

You can move out of country but for that you need to buy tickets but your cards don't work anymore, your bank accounts are frozen, cash isn't acceptable anymore and digital currency isn't fungible.

Worse? Are you serious?

In EU, Czechia. Foreign(french lol) banks are banning accounts because you work in gun manufacturing industry. In EU. When 2 countries from you, there is a FCKIN' war happening.

Only because France, Germany, UK and similar countries are against guns and against self-defense, where your only option is to lay on the ground and let the attacker kill you.

Luckily we can still use guns for self-defense, we can conceal carry by default and we will fight EU laws till our death for this.

(pepper sprays, knives and even katana, whatever. Heh that's a joke, but for real, you can use that without any permit, in theory.)

EU Brusel is trying very hard to force these idiotic laws to every country.

Eg.: they forced limited mags for rifles.

We have bypassed that with local law haha, when you get a gun permit (which is not easy, but not impossible) you just fill a paper with "a gun buy order" for the police and you are by law allowed to have unlimited magazine, silencer and special JHP ammo. Reason self-defense and defense of your property (default reason, police will only check same thing they've checked for gun permit. Your criminal record).

And also luckily we don't need to use anything, because our criminality is a liiiiitle bit lower than France, Germany and UK. You know why.

But tide is changing, Poland will be biggest economy in EU in few years and their gun laws are also changing and we have a lot of common with them.

I believe together with other reasonable countries (Slovakia, Hungary etc.) We will overturn this idiocy comming from France, Germany and other "west" countries.

Btw I'm for EU, even for federalization of EU. But with US approach. EU should be no.1 country, yes country, in the world.

>In EU, Czechia. Foreign(french lol) banks are banning accounts because you work in gun manufacturing industry. In EU. When 2 countries from you, there is a FCKIN' war happening.

That shouldn't be happening. French banks on Czech soil should operate under Czech, not French laws. Otherwise the Czech banking authorities should go after them. Something is fishy about that.

Also, which banks do French citizens working in the arms industry use if they're not allowed to? This is all very bizarre.

Yes this is very bizarre.

But this is official story, contractors and employees who worked for Czech arms manufacturer got their personal! accounts disabled.

They had mortgages in these accounts and bank notify them to move mortgage elsewhere.

Reason given by bank, broken internal policy, we cannot disclose which. Goodbye.

https://militarnyi.com/en/news/czech-banks-discriminate-agai...

>Reason given by bank, broken internal policy, we cannot disclose which. Ridiculous.

I'm sure what they did was illegal, the problem with such cases is that even if you take them to court and win, you'll still lose a lot of time, money and stress in the process of fighting a bank in court, while for the bank the lawsuit is just another small business expense.

Centrain industries and businesses tend to act above the law even if they know they're in the wrong simply because the punishments if they get caught are too lax.

That's why I'm a big fan of direct personal accountability. Like the person working at the bank who made the choice to close the accounts should go to jail. Because otherwise nefarious people simply hide behind the accountability shield of a large org where nobody is responsible for anything and accountability is always deflected.

Like big tech they may refuse service when they like to (which is crazy)

Why is it crazy? EU has the "basic payment account" scheme which makes sure that ultimately nobody is left without a bank account.

Yeah, so they say.

The eu it self has a faceless committee that debanks people without a day in court or any oversight.

The us also freely debanks people (and their family!) in the eu without any kind of legal process.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2025/07/26/europea...

Banks are said to be required to state a reason for refusing or freezing an account but at the same time they may not disclose reporting you.

So they are pretty much free to not respond.

https://www.eccnet.eu/news/ecc-net-calls-stronger-enforcemen...

>The eu it self has a faceless committee that debanks people without a day in court or any oversight.

Yepo, that's scarier to me than big-tech closing my email account. The issue is HN users defend the EU on its trigger happy ability to debank its citizen without a court trial.

>The eu it self has a faceless committee that debanks people without a day in court or any oversight.

Which committee is that?

>Banks are said to be required to state a reason for refusing or freezing an account

Such requirements tend to exist only in the case of basic PAD accounts.

>but at the same time they may not disclose reporting you.

So? Reporting you does nothing.

If they think you are a fraudster or terrorist (etc) they have to refuse giving you an account and must silently report you. What would happen if they skip/delay the reporting part?

Fair enough, but what do we do when the banks abuse this system to just cut off honest people they just don't want to serve because of whatever reason, maybe profit? That's the definition of discrimiantion.

Banks are required to provide fairly detailed information when refusing basic PAD accounts on those grounds. This doesn't apply to regular bank accounts, but these are specifically the accounts intended by regulators for people who'd otherwise not be able to access banking services.

>What would happen if they skip/delay the reporting part?

They wouldn't. Typically banks take the approach of filing as many reports as they can. If you're overeager in filing the reports, nobody will look at them and you will not be blamed for not filing those reports.

Google for something along the lines of "suspicious activity report flooded" and you'll find endless stories demonstrating how ineffective these systems are.

> Reason given by bank, broken internal policy, we cannot disclose which. Goodbye.

Wow this sucks. One thing I took from this comment (and the previous one), if you allow me to (badly) synthesize is: we might need less policy making and more policy enforcement.

Why? It's because of enforcement the bank is doing this.

The policies don't prohibit banks from getting rid of risky customers, they actively encourage it.

What policies of local legal framework and the bank define as a "rksy customer" might vary completely.

For example many EU banks refuse service to US citizens due to them still being tax liable in their own country and the banks not waiting to deal with that shit. Or they refuse service to Iranians, Russians or other nationalities in case of conflicts. That's the definition of a risky customer and they're legally allowed to bail on.

But working legally in your nations arms industry is not the definition of a risky customer because you're a legal citizen with rights in your own country, your arms company operates legally with all the checks and approvals of the government, and the banks should as well. Therefore there's no risks coming from the customer here to the local bank because neither you or the employer are doing anything in gray legal areas to be a risk.

>What policies of local legal framework and the bank define as a "rksy customer" might vary completely.

No they don't? Your next sentence demonstrates as much:

> For example many EU banks refuse service to US citizens due to them still being tax liable in their own country and the banks not waiting to deal with that shit

Local jurisdiction makes fuck all difference. Ignoring foreign regulations would be suicidal for a bank which wants to take part in international commerce.

> But working legally in your nations arms industry is not the definition of a risky customer because you're a legal citizen with rights in your own country, your arms company operates legally with all the checks and approvals of the government, and the banks should as well

Any bank picks up a very significant regulatory burden by engaging in transactions with such an entity. The idea that any bank could just assume that an arms manufacturer is fully compliant because the Czech government allows them to exist is hilarious.

Why is this supposed to be surprising? These kinds of customers are a huge compliance burden for the bank, why should the banks keep doing business with customers that most likely cost them money?

Because the Czech branch of the French bank operates under Czech not French laws. French rules don't have jurisdiction in Czechia.

That has nothing to do with why this is happening.

What's your argument on this? Because nothing that I said is wrong.

The "because" part is wrong. Also, FWIW, countries in the EU don't just get to make their own banking rules.

I don't have an argument, you are simply misunderstanding what's happening here.

Closing accounts that belong to high risk customers who aren't making you a bunch of money is an entirely normal and legal thing to do.

EU solved this a long time ago, you have the right to a "basic payment account". Just not necessarily from the bank of your choice. The accounts closed here were not such accounts.

> countries in the EU don't just get to make their own banking rules.

They 100% do.

>Closing accounts that belong to high risk customers who aren't making you a bunch of money is an entirely normal and legal thing to do.

It isn't a legal thing to do because they didn't give a reason why. ANd if they do give a reason it must be legal to the local legal framework. Is being in the weapons industry a legal argument by Czech laws to close someone's account?

>They 100% do.

Not even close. For the most part, they're bound by EU regulations.

>It isn't a legal thing to do because they didn't give a reason why. ANd if they do give a reason it must be legal to the local legal framework. Is being in the weapons industry a legal argument by Czech laws to close someone's account?

Banks are only obligated to give a reason for closing basic PAD accounts. No such obligation exists for normal bank accounts.

What is the french owned bank you're referring to? Your article mentions ČSOB (Belgian ownership)and Česká spořitelna (Austrian ownership). The source [1] also mentions issues with Fio bank, which according to Wikipedia has Czech owners. The source also attributes this to ESG rules, rather than supplying weapons to Ukraine. Last year, the European Commission launched a legislative initiative designed to make it easier for arms manufacturers to secure funding, including by clarifying the rules within the ESG framework regarding prohibited weapons.[2] I therefore find it hard to believe that the EU deliberately brought about the incidents described. Regardless of this, I do not consider it sensible to conflate the issues of ‘private gun ownership’ and ‘the financing of arms companies’.

[1]https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/ekonomika/ceska-ekonomika/na-hypo...

[2]https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-defence-indus...

> In EU, Czechia. Foreign(french lol) banks are banning accounts because you work in gun manufacturing industry.

I don't think that's how its supposed to work. So IF you're correct and a French entity of any kind is found breaking current Czech laws, THEN this must be reported and action must be taken against it, no matter the law, no discussions here.

> Only because France, Germany, UK and similar countries are against guns and against self-defense, where your only option is to lay on the ground and let the attacker kill you.

This is a big reduction to the absurd, and unnecessarily inflammatory. I'm no dang, but I would ask you to please refrain from such things, in the name of civil discourse. It could have been dishonestly framed in a number of other ways, for example, "Poland as a country is pro-violence and pro-crime, since they are arguably fond of shooting people". I know this must not be as simple, as "laying on the ground and letting the attacker kill you" does not look like a sound defense strategy. However, gun collecting and sports are not, to me, good reasons for owning firearms. To each their own.

> Luckily we can still use guns for self-defense, we can conceal carry by default and we will fight EU laws till our death for this.

> (pepper sprays, knives and even katana, whatever)

Wow, go Brussels I guess. Hope they can eventually implement the "idiotic laws" that make people unable to kill each other with katanas.

>In EU, Czechia. Foreign(french lol) banks are banning accounts because you work in gun manufacturing industry. In EU. When 2 countries from you, there is a FCKIN' war happening.

Why do you think this is special? US banks will do this too lmao.

There's not a single serious bank in the world that wouldn't consider this an incredibly high risk industry. The compliance load for banks is incredible, especially if you're selling those weapons internationally.

>Only because France, Germany, UK and similar countries are against guns and against self-defense, where your only option is to lay on the ground and let the attacker kill you.

All EU countries and the UK use pretty much the same wording when it comes to self defense. ECHR limits what the states can allow, Czechia isn't allowed to e.g. pass a law allowing you to shoot anyone who enters your home.

Credit cards, iDeal, SWIFT, Paypal, Venmo, etc are all fully traceable. Anonimity at the protocol level is not a design goal for any of these.

Being worse is debatable: the main difference is the government being able to execute blocking on their own, vs having to convince all banking institutions to do it for them - doesn't sound hard as the govt will always have all the leverage.

Also important to note that BCB (the central bank in Brazil) is autonomous, and technically protected from political influence, thought that ground has been proven shaky.

Indeed the issue was leverage. The problem is CDBC. The govs plan is to end money fungibility. Once they get that leverage, MasterCard or central bank is just a detail.

> That sounds worse to be honest. You're essentially asking for the government to be not only aware of but also able to control all digital payments. That upends how money has worked over (literally) millenia, and is an incredible risk to take. Giving someone in government the ability to block someone's payments and trusting they won't abuse it might be fine as long as good people remain in power, but do you really want to bet the entire nation's ability to live life on that?

There are financial laws that banks must comply with and one of them require banks to share information with the Central Bank about potential fraudulent transactions. Having a payment system using the CB's infrastructure doesn't change anything. They are still required to comply to bank secrecy laws and can only investigate your transactions after obtaining a warrant.

> There are financial laws that banks must comply with and one of them require banks to share information with the Central Bank about potential fraudulent transactions. Having a payment system using the CB's infrastructure doesn't change anything.

That's just... a completely false assertion on its face? Putting the CB in the middle lets the CB (read: government) proactively block any set of transactions at will, and at scale, before anyone has any chance to litigate or otherwise dispute it. Which literally lets the government entirely cut off any citizen's ability to access the rest of human society. That makes no difference in your eyes vs. post-facto investigation/warrants/etc.?

We saw a live example of this with the IRS too, no? Do you think they would've had just as easy of a time accessing such financial records if they were held by a private entity than by the IRS itself?

> Giving someone in government the ability to block someone's payments and trusting they won't abuse it might be fine as long as good people remain in power, but do you really want to bet the entire nation's ability to live life on that?

Banking and finance companies honour foreign government sanctions. Ask Francesca Albanese.

Libertarian comparisons of government and non-government behaviour always devolves into angel counting.

The state has the power to cancel a person. If MasterCard denies to service you well at least you can look for a competitor or sue. Anyway digital authoritarianism is inevitable. PIX and this Euro system are steps towards CDBCs.

Tikkie has a different usecase. It's meant for smaller payments between individuals

In fact, you can pay a Tikkie using iDEAL/Wero

PIX is for everything, but Indeed Tikkie is more a p2p tool.

(I haven't tried PIX so not sure) but UPI is really great too and I think that Pix is similar to UPI and UPI was launched by India nearly 4 years ago than brazil.

Anyways, one of the things that I am interested about in payment systems is say creating cross-payments between Pix,UPI and Wero.

UPI is already there for a few countries and there are more trials which are happening and my brother was a bit involved in trying to add UPI to london. (I think it was some efforts by his college perhaps, I am not sure completely.)

For India, the largest points are remittances and for other nations, it gives a really well built payment system and integrates it to more economies.

UPI is accepted in seven countries: Bhutan, France, Mauritius, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Wero does have recurring payments planned too (apparently for end of 2026), seems like they're well aware of PIX and racing hard to get into exactly the same space.

It's in theory already possible with iDeal from what I can tell (I've seen companies that use subscriptions set up an initial iDeal payment and then convert it into a regular recurring SEPA Direct Debit), but I'm going to assume that the process is kind of messy since I haven't seen many companies implement the system in that way.

Direct Debit is very nice, largely because your bank manages the subscription; companies have to declare the payment ahead of time and if you get balance mixed up for some reason, then the bank will just do the payment whenever your balance is correct if it happens within a week. I've had credit cards decline on subscriptions before because I didn't have enough loaded up on them. Never had that issue with SEPA.

Either that or "credit cards just work", so very few entities bothered until now.

PIX should be the gold standard for this - it’s works perfectly for all use cases that I can think of.

Hell even the homeless people around here take donations in PIX, but you can also buy a house with it. Zero fees involved

> Zero fees involved

Won’t someone think of the profits!

Zero fees for an individual, by regulation. Companies pay for PIX usage. Some banks waive these fees, and it is comparable to debit card transaction fees.

And magically things are much cheaper when you do this, both because they're actually cheaper without individual billing and associated overhead, and because the few larger payers have a powerful incentive to ensure they pay as little as possible.

Nah, BLIK from Poland was there earlier and is in many ways better, Wero was unfairly lobbied for by the old European guard, so most of Eastern Europe walked away.

They are now hesitantly joining Wero, supporting it only to downplay and to lobby ECB for an API platform and not for a product.

I've used BLIK once, for an online payment from the Netherlands to Poland, and for that it was terrible. I assume it's much better integrated into the Polish system.

Every bank supports it - there are quick money transfers by phone number (as long such number is registered as a payment recipient within Blik) and kind of cheque that can be redeemed using ATM. And of course you can do standard withdraw, deposit operations with Blik using ATM as well. POS terminals supports it along with standard card and contactless payment options.

Blik supports one-time, recurring and deferred payments (that last thing is just being implemented by few banks but probably will be available everywhere soon), and one-click ones that don't require PIN verification. I'm not 100% sure but the only thing that's not possible is charge-back - if you pay with Blik, you're left with a standard complaint for payment that caused problems.

Last year I was using Blik to pay for my taxi to some 80-year old private driver because I didn't had enough cash - he was totally fine with it and as I noticed his car had even a Blik sticker.

Not sure how other European systems work like but I assume these are pretty similar in terms of functionality. The 6 digit temporary codes generated by your bank app and verified by secondary PIN will stay here along contactless payments done by cards or phones, watches.

I think a nice thing about BLIK is that it actually worked in my case, even though it was cumbersome. Using iDEAL from a Polish account just isn't going to happen.

> BLIK from Poland was there earlier

BLIK was launched in 2015 according to Wikipedia; iDeal is from 2005.

iDeal from 2005 is not Wero ;-)

I think Colombian's Bre-B system took heavy inspiration on PIX. It is amazing and so easy to use.

> PIX from Brazil is even better, to be honest.

You lack the inherent fraud, bankruptcy and other malicious actor protection that Visa/Mastercard provides.

Bought something online and didn't receive your product? With PIX you're SOL, with Visa/Mastercard you get a chargeback.

Yes, but it's a statistically negative sum game for the customer. Visa wouldn't offer such a service if they weren't winning out in the long run, collecting rent on every one of your purchases.

I am sure they gain something from it.

My Brazillian bank charges me 600% yearly interest on credit card purchases.

However, the cost of a lawsuit can quickly offset the costs of a CC. Depending on the state, there may not be a maximum cap on expenses, making lawsuits incredibly expensive. (Whereas having paid by card you could ask for a chargeback instead of needing to sue)

It's also a very time consuming ordeal having to sue vendors in these instances.

Am I mistaken or hasn't that been capped to 100% for a while?

The maximum they can take in fees in a 12 month period is 100% of the original sum, having a 600% interest rate just means they get to the 100% cap that much faster. Ensuring that the consumer does not have sufficient time to pay off the debt before it doubles.

That’s like telling people not to get homeowners insurance for the same reason

Like, yes, it’s technically a bad deal. But it’s still worth the extra cost for most people

> But it’s still worth the extra cost for most people.

Is it? You charge back over 2% of your transaction volume? If you don't then just removing the middleman will make everyone happier. If you do, I have questions as to why...

If they'd come close to such chargebacks, they'd already be kicked out of the system and blocked.

Insurance like that is normally because if the potential size of the loss. Losing a house is way more than most people could stand. A closer example might be buying the extra service contract on every electronics purchase you make: that's usually a bad deal.

You're describing the concept of insurance.

I know ;)

I can't imagine in what world it sounds like a good idea to attach an extra insurance product as a mandatory step to use cash online. Feel free to take out insurance for every 5€ product you buy online but I don't want to pay an extra % of my income to the finance industry just to use the money I've earned

This one, apparently, based on how the CC duopoly keeps freezing out legitimate businesses based on the concern du jour. Payment providers should be dumb pipes with other services bolted on top as needed.

This looks as a benefit on the surface, but it is not. In the end everybody loses -- the bank, the network, the customer, the merchant.

That has nothing to do with visa/MasterCard. (Well maybe it does in Brasil). In Poland if you use BLIK which is also a national payment network and you get scammed or money stolen from you the bank will also refund you, same as with visa or MasterCard.

It's not the visa/mastercard that offer chargeback, but the bank.

That is by design. It separates the payment processor so it does just that, just payments. It is like money, once you give it to someone else there is no automatic way to fish it back from their pocket to yours. The correct avenue to deal with fraud, bankruptcy and other malicious actor is the small claims court (or civil court, or criminal court).

The moment you start burdening the payment processor with the roles of judge/referee over all goods and services you end up with the mess we have with CCs where Visa/Mastercard are morality czars that dictate what goods and services are valid or invalid, nuking people and companies out of modern society for their own arbitrary reasons.

Edit: And just to add, you can have "chargeback" for PIX as a separate service, most banks offer PIX insurance that is basically CC chargeback by a different name. But the key is that it is separate from the payment infrastructure itself, it is an insurance service that you contract separately. And that separation ins very important, the insurance company can't roll back transactions arbitrarily, or deny people access to the financial system, they have to pay the victim and then claw back their money in court, which is the appropriate venue to decide who is right or wrong in a transaction.

That makes it a bad design, since every person you interact with has the potential to be a scumbag and not deliver on what you paid for. "Get a lawyer and sue them" or "Rely on your local consumer advocacy agency" cannot be the answers at the kind of scale that will be enabled.

This is the reason I only _ever_ spend money on credit cards, and never use cash or debit cards (European in the US). I've personally had at least three disputes this year resolved in my favor by American Express, and will not sign up for something that suggests courts should do so instead.

(I was editing when you repplied so I'll add it here for you:)

And just to add, you can have "chargeback" for PIX as a separate service, most banks offer PIX insurance that is basically CC chargeback by a different name. But the key is that it is separate from the payment infrastructure itself, it is an insurance service that you contract separately. And that separation ins very important, the insurance company can't roll back transactions arbitrarily, or deny people access to the financial system, they have to pay the victim and then claw back their money in court, which is the appropriate venue to decide who is right or wrong in a transaction.

> in court, which is the appropriate venue to decide who is right or wrong in a transaction.

Hard disagree on this - it makes the asymmetry between individual consumer and powerful company too substantial. At least with the status quo, there is another powerful company _on the side of the individual consumer_.

Requiring a court case for every case of unfulfilled contracts which could be resolved trivially by credit card companies would mean I'd done almost nothing else this year besides dealing with that, instead of making three calls to American Express.

There also a large number of typos that happen. Typos in the amount. Typos in email or mobile number where you are sending the funds to (if pushing a payment instead of seller pulling).

At least up til now, this doesn't seem to be a significant problem with iDeal. Any iDeal receiver will need to have at least a Dutch bank account, which requires the bank to be very sure of the identity of the person/people (UBOs) holding the account. So downright fraud is unlikely. If there is, one can file a police report, and hopefully the DA will take it to court.

Disputes between non-fraudulent entities happen of course. But I really don't like some algorithm somewhere taking seemingly arbitrary decisions on that. It usually just amounts to robbing merchants of their money, and adding some exorbitant refund fee to top it of. Settling disputes is what small claims court and dispute committees are for.

Of course, with iDeal now effectively becoming EU-wide, things may get more difficult.

> Any iDeal receiver will need to have at least a Dutch bank account,

Which makes it somewhat less than iDeal for anyone who isn't Dutch. The magic of Visa and Mastercard is they enable commerce between two people, even if they bank on different sides of the planet. Well, not Russia - but they do work in Japan, and if you ever dealt with the Japanese banking system you will know that's a minor miracle.

> This is the reason I only _ever_ spend money on credit cards

Which illustrates one of the most prolific examples of regulatory capture.

Credit cards became mainstream because of that protection, which was a triumph for the payment processors. Whatever they spent on lobbying was a bargain.

> their own arbitrary reasons

Outside pressure behind much of it.

In any case, there's a fundamental mismatch between pressure groups and the leverage they can exert through single-consensus. I don't know how to describe the other consensus that is on my brain, but it is distinct.

If I get sent a fake (or no) product by someone halfway around the world there's absolutely no way I'm getting my money back in small claims court.

Then use a service that offers escrow. I don't need my groceries to use insurance for the eventuality that the store goes belly-up in the 2 days until I can check that the products arrived in good order

Base payment products should just do payment at operating margins rivaling a non-profit. It's public infrastructure

I'm quite happy with the status quo that I don't need to negotiate escrow with every random online service or store.

That's not the status quo here, but you can often choose to use an american payment mechanism that has this insurance built in. Isn't a selection of things, as we have today, fine then? If these insurers use the cheap transaction service under the hood, and you can choose it directly for a discount, everyone's happy right?

I saw your reply earlier but came back to it because I'm ordering from a new store and they actually offer a discount if you pay with SEPA instead of one of the 11 other options that are various forms of "pay in installments" (take up a credit basically), "pay with insurance", or "pay with your favorite american payment provider". I have no problem paying slightly less than the advertised product price! :) It's a well-known store so imma trust their customer support in case of issues, and the product price is such that insurance makes absolutely no sense (I could bear the loss nearly 100 times over and still make rent this month)

What you’re describing here results in extreme consolidation. The one or two e-commerce giants that figure it out will rule. No startup can ever sell anything online easily. Why would a customer trust a new or upcoming brand or buy anything online?

Thats a good argument but those are also features that could be provided by the force of government power in a government and country where the government is not and has not intentionally been corrupted, partially for the very purpose of preventing something like digital cash that is anonymous just like cash was before people foolishly gave in to the “convenience” of cards and acting like they had money by using credit cards.

> Bought something online and didn't receive your product? With PIX you're SOL, with Visa/Mastercard you get a chargeback.

Visa/Mastercard aren't handling chargebacks, the banks are. With PIX the way to get a chargeback is the same: if you've been victim of fraud you open a claim with the bank, they'll review it, then possibly give you a charge back within a week. This review process might take longer or be denied, which requires a lawsuit.

But it's only less risky for banks to chargeback immediately on Visa/Mastercard because they make so much money from credit card fees that they can afford it.

Good, that's a feature - I don't need my payment processor to have value judgments on my spending.

Visa/Mastercard provides that because the US is a very untrustworthy country. I don't know the situation in Brazil, but here in Europe small claims court just works fine. I think it's pretty dysfunctional to have to rely on private companies for adequate legal protection.

(Brazilian here)

It works (passably) well here as well. However there's widespread lack of basic civic awareness which makes it harder for people to even know they could be settling such things on small claims court.

Brazil has a huge advantage in that they've required full transaction-level transparency for tax authorities -- with clearly defined technical requirements -- for almost 20 years now. One can argue whether it's a pro or a con to share this level of detail with the federal government, but it certainly makes taxation easier and fraud prosecution simpler, too.

> Bought something online and didn't receive your product? With PIX you're SOL, with Visa/Mastercard you get a chargeback.

This is no longer the case outside US. Last time I had the account of one of the few credit cards I'm using (on the Visa or Mastercard networks), for transactions I should have been clearly reimbursed / credited, as it used to be the case, actually awarded in my favor, was four years ago. Recent transactions, with proven vendor at fault, ended up with my loss. All over Europe (Im traveling a lot). So no tears shed for Visa or Mastercard losing the EU turf.

False. There are mechanisms to undo PIX transactions. One such mechanism is the MED (official tool by the Central Bank). It can be used to help victims of scams, fraud and operating failures on the part of institutions so they can recover the cash).

https://www.bcb.gov.br/estabilidadefinanceira/pix-seguranca

There's also the different insurance plans offered by mostly all banks and payment-adjacent businesses.

> you can use it for recurrent payment, split payments, financing, cashout and almost all things a CC can do nowadays

But can credit cards really do all those things? You just entrust your credit card number to a party that does it for you, but the credit card system itself isn't taking care of those things like recurring payments.

Since last year, Colombia has implemented Bre-B, our copy of Brazil’s Pix, and it’s been fantastic. I can’t wait to see it mature to the same level as Pix, and I really hope both systems are eventually linked together.

This is a brilliant response. I love personal anecdotes like this that meaningfully contribute to a better conversation on HN.

First: PIX sounds insanely good! I wish I had it where I live.

My follow-up question: Can anyone with experience with India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) comment about capabilities compared to PIX? It is frequently lauded as one of the best e/mobile payment services in the (developing) world.

Judging from what I am reading about PIX capabilities, UPI can do everything. It can also allow you to make merchant payments from Rupay credit cards. It also supports automatic recurring payments.

iDeal can also be used for recurring payment. I set one up yesterday.

If you like Tikkie, you may like bunq as well.

This is kind of a problem with Wero though [1]:

> 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.

Why the ** am I constricted to using an app on Android or iOS. Ever heard of laptops? Windows? ChromeOS? macOS? Linux in general?

[1] https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599074240...

banks really like hardware attestation and putting that in laptops and PCs causes serious pushback from people like us here. not an option to not have hardware attestation on mobile - it's been there since day 1, there's nothing to protest against anymore

Although at this point, doesn't Windows 11 require TPM, and Apple has had the Secure Enclave since the T2 Macs...

I wonder if it will work on OSes like SailfishOS, LineageOS, GrapheneOS, and the like.

I think for many banks, Wero will be implemented in the banks' apps (like iDEAL currently is). So then the situation is probably the same as now (where most, but not all banking apps work without Play remote attestation).

For day-to-day payments, GNU Taler seems like the best option by far, since it protects the customers’ anonymity. (It’s essentially like digital cash.) Unfortunately, only very few banks support it at the moment.

https://www.taler.net/en/

> iDeal system, which in my opinion is the gold standard of how internet payment should work

Is it? I see it more as an underwhelming fix for SEPA Direct Debit's inability to verify payment data synchronously.

* iDeal doesn't support basic features like pre-authorization. I'm not even sure if it supports setting up a payment agreement without triggering an immediate payment at all (pretty sure it didn't, when we integrated it a couple of years ago).

* It hands over the customer's IBAN, which isn't really that much safer than a credit card number, since any merchant can trigger a SEPA Direct Debit using it. While you can trigger a chargeback, that requires you to actively monitor for fraudulent transactions, which a decent system wouldn't allow in the first place.

* iDeal recurring payments are SEPA Direct Debit, with all their downsides, like taking days to confirm and a payment that fails due to insufficient funds in the customer's bank account resulting in a significant fee the merchant has to pay (and will probably pass on to the customer).

And Wero has one of the worst, least informative websites I have ever seen. So it's really hard to figure out how it works, and what it supports.

> It hands over the customer's IBAN, which isn't really that much safer than a credit card number, since any merchant can trigger a SEPA Direct Debit using it.

Yes. And they would quickly lose their ability to process any payments. This is the exact same idea as how credit cards work. I don't see my IBAN as a secret, all my friends have it, as thats how they can send me money right to my account.

> that requires you to actively monitor for fraudulent transactions, which a decent system wouldn't allow in the first place.

So that rules out credit cards too, exact same system.

I'm not familiar with pix mentioned in the other threads, but I am not familiar with any other system that is better

No. The bank gives you a prominent notification when someone new gets a direct debit authorization for your account. And a merchant gets banned quickly when they misuse their debit authorization.

right. direct debit has been a thing for a long time and I have never got a fraud attempt or heard of anyone who did

> pre-authorization

If you need pre-authorization use credit, iDeal is a debit system.

> It hands over the customer's IBAN

SEPA Direct Debit requires my consent one time on my banking app.

Giving out your IBAN number is generally safer then giving out your Credit card number, date of expiration and cvv code.

Additionally it allows for things like name to account checking, therefore making it less likely you will be scammed.

I was under the impression that direct debit requires an initial authorization from the account owner? Otherwise anyone with your bank account number can pull your account funds and bank account numbers are hardly a private information (unlike a cc where you need the card number/expiry/cvv code and generally a correct address)

Not quite (but maybe differs per bank?). You get a notification a few days before the first debit takes place, and you have the right to request the debit be annulled for at least a month after it happens.

I've never seen an address needed for a cc charge, although sometimes a zip code is needed.

> It hands over the customer's IBAN, which isn't really that much safer than a credit card number, since any merchant can trigger a SEPA Direct Debit using it.

this is not true. the IBAN alone is insufficient to authorize a direct debit.

Interestingly in a number of African Countries (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania etc) , we have “Mobile Money”, Payments are instant, via USSD, no internet required, I can even pay online using USSD push.This is a classical example of humans using what they have to build what they need , no fancy internet enabled smart phones required. I can send money anytime instantly to my grandma deep in the village. She can withdraw from or top up her account in the numerous mobile money stalls that are everywhere. You pay school dues, medical bills , groceries via mobile money. I don’t remember the last time I visited a bank, hell I can even get an instant loan by just dailing *165# on my no internet feature phone.

Are you referring to m-pesa?

That's still a man in the middle coordinating the payments (mpesa, etc...) and essentially holding both sides of the transaction. When you send money to somebody with mobile money you're sending it to the mobile network operator who then let's the other person know so they can move the money to somebody else (or cashout or leave it there).

It's not really a federated system because you can't for instance send money from mpesa in kenya to a different provider in uganda.

Actually you can send money (cross border payments ) to another country that also has mobile money, I can send money to a Kenyan, Tanzanian etc all I need is their Phone number. I am not sure what you mean by “holding both sides of the transaction “, when you send me money it appears in my balance (which I can check via a USSD query), it’s essentially a bank account but on USSD and sms. A lot of cross border payments are now settled via USSD. Hell I can now get a Visa/Mastercard by just dailing a code and I will have payment details with my name and address.

the mobile money while convenient r not exactly secure due to MITM.

For those wondering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstructured_Supplementary_Ser...

Yesterday I was renewing my vehicle registration through my US states website. They offered a range of payment options using embedded options on the site. The direct bank account option had the lowest fee but when I tried it I was immediately scared of the security. They used a 3rd party bank account transfer provider that asked me what bank I used and looked like it was going to prompt me for my login info before it errored out and I moved on.

Why can't the US have sane banking standards instead of this mess where you have to agree to a new 3rd party TOS and EULA for every purchase you want to make.

What you see is a glued or patchwork to make the things work somehow with the existing state of things. Strictly speaking, a lot of banks do not offer API support and yet these third party tools are able to orchestrate a flow with is nothing less than man-in-the-middle-attack.

The change if it happens at all, across the board to streamline can only from from government mandate. The industry is always going to go for finding some low cost option to achieve the target. The private players are always going to optimize for short term gains.

When using a government website, you were intimidated by the security posture of... Plaid? (Genuine question, maybe this was some other provider but Plaid's aggregator tool is the most common place I see this pop up in real life for ACH)

I personally have _no idea_ what the security posture of plaid is. I know they're a startup and made a bit of noise a few years ago, but if I was trying to buy something and a third party app popped up saying, "hey give me total access to withdraw directly from your bank account for a sec", why on earth would I say yes to that?

It also seems to go against common security advice. "Never log into your back account if redirected by a website you sort of, but don't really trust, except sometimes its alright and it's up to you to tell the difference" is a terrible way to secure banking.

Nowadays Plaid uses OAuth for many banks, but the real problem is and always has been that they get full access to your transaction data and pass it on to their users.

In fairness they redirect you to your bank to login, you authorize the application (which can be revoked at any time), and then they redirect you back with tokenized information. (In fact it's kind of a pain point that when I use Plaid to link my bank for eg reimbursement deposits from my FSA/HSA, it has tokenized the account numbers so I can't actually tell which account is which.) I guess I get for less savvy users why that might look scary but the alternative is... keying your account number directly into a merchant's system for ACH, which is actually scary (and the default on many government websites which I actually trust less!)

If any site asks me for my bank login credentials, I run far away and start checking if I've made any security mistakes. So far Paypal is the only credentials I'll enter after a redirect.

I went back and checked. It was not Plaid but Trustly. I've never heard of either before but Trustly's name makes me want to trust it even less than Plaid. And I'm more concerned about all of my personal information such as my transaction history for the past 90 days being siphoned up by yet another commercial entity that can probably profit more from it than the transaction fee they would have collected.

US should have sane transfers soon. The Federal Reserve developed FedNow which is instant bank transfers. It is more secure than ACH since it only does pushes and requests.

It takes time for banks to implement it. There is also conflict with Zelle that some banks developed. I don't think it is meant for buying things, but secure and fast replacement for ACH would be good enough.

I think any dutchie can vouch that iDeal has been amazing. I would also like to add that Wise has been amazing for american payments. I needed it for Anthropic at the time, and this worked good enough

Certainly better and easier to say than Chipknip!

Funnily enough, the ECB's Digital Euro initiative has a lot in common with the chipknip, except you can now also charge your wallet with larger amounts of money.

Chipknip has the mouth feel of Gnip Gnop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX2bqI--c-k

RIP chipknip. But let’s appreciate its ambition: electronic payments without being online.

There is a 3DSecure system for existing Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. After typing your card numbers, the transaction doesn’t immediately go through but you are also redirected to the bank’s system. Banks can ask you to use a hardware token, an app, or any other second factor to approve the transaction.

It’s a shame that this system isn’t ubiquitous for the rest of us not in EU.

The problem with 3D Secure is that the merchant can unilaterally decide not to use it, which defeats the whole purpose of 3D Secure.

I tend to associate ignoring 3D Secure with Stripe. In the name of "less friction" of course.

non-3DS payments are trivial to chargeback, at least in the EU

In America all payments are trivial to chargeback anyways.

We ought to have liability shifting. A long time ago there was a liability shift where if a merchant uses the magnetic stripe on a card equipped with a chip, then the merchant is unconditionally liable in case of a chargeback. We just needed merchants to be liable when the bank supported 3DSecure but the merchant chose not to use it.

They are everywhere. Default liability for online payments is and has always been with the merchant; only 3DS and some wallets can shift it to the issuer.

> the merchant can unilaterally decide not to use it

If they do so, they are telling the card issuer that they are happy to be on the hook for chargebacks/fraud. It's not an decision without consequences

Comparing to fraud 3DS reduces sales turn over by a lot, and this is the reason why for the most part it is not required in the US, too much friction during check out hurts business.

Are they, though? Does the end customer get more post-transaction protections when not using 3D Secure? That doesn't sound right. I'd think the merchant is on the hook exactly as much either way.

> Does the end customer get more post-transaction protections when not using 3D Secure?

That's not quite how it works. The merchant gets less protections, because they are opting to allow potentially fraudulent transactions.

The difference is whether Visa eats the cost of dealing with the fraudulent transaction

> After typing your card numbers

Yes, but the whole point of Wero is that you don't have to type in a bunch of info that can be easily stolen. With Wero (and many other international solutions), you just scan a code with your phone, and your banking app handles the transactions. The existing legacy solutions are just duct tape on an existing system.

So you have to use a phone or does it work without one?

Does it handle credit card payments?

The QR code just contains a URL to a website, so you can also just use that link and a web browser. That website will let you choose which bank you use, and then redirect to your bank's website which will use your bank account directly. I don't think it works with cards at all.

Thanks, that sounds pretty good.

If 3DS and chip + PIN card usage were ubiquitous, the value of a stolen card number and even card would be zero, and this entire problem would go away.

Unfortunately, legacy deployments have just proven too pervasive to effect real change, even with substantial incentives, especially in early card adopting markets such as the US.

Aren't they ubiquitous and required at least for 5-10 years now?

The US essentially uses neither 3DS nor PINs.

If this system is ubiquitous stealing your card number would be useless. Your card number becomes a user name like jonkoops that you would have no qualms sharing.

Does it mean that instead of depending on the Visa/Mastercard duopoly you now depend on the Google/Apple duopoly?

Of course not, since you can just install the Android app on your free software aftermarket OS. Surely banks wouldn't require hardware attestation or monitor your device for being rooted, would they? /s

Irony aside, yeah, this is a significant downside compared to hardware-based standards. Not so much for Android, as Google Pay and most competitors are implemented in software, but on a hypothetical iPhone or Garmin device running an open OS (don't laugh, it's a thought experiment), payment data security would be not much of a concern since all payment keys live in a secure and completely separate chip.

Useful reference for banking app compatibility in grapheneOS https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...

If using a phone, yes, but then you probably already did.

> you just scan a code with your phone,

And authorize yourself with the banking app, and, and...

It's not less complicated than auto filling credit/debit card details with your finger print on your phone or laptop.

For consumers, Wero, Pix, and similar systems only have down sides for online use. The most important down side is that you can't reclaim your funds if you've been the victim of fraud. Which you can when paying by card.

Has nothing to do with the steps

But what's the value of stolen card data? It always requires 2FA to be used. It's just routing information to your bank.

Are there still cards that work without 2FA?

This is pretty much every payment I do in Finland works. Always have to go and verify it using my online banking credentials after I've entered the numbers. Does make me wonder why I need to bother with the whole number, expiry and CVV bullshit anyway.

The problem is that these are all US systems.

> should redirect me to my bank

Eugh. The problem with that is that people don't verify they've actually been sent to their bank. An attacker will set up fake merchant sites, pay for Google ads to get your traffic, then have you log into your bank to pay for things.

The more we normalise this, the quicker people will fall for it.

If they haven't been redirected to their bank, verifying with their mobile banking app using a QR code will not work.

So I have to get out my phone every time I use my credit card on my computer?

That’s why we don’t pay 3%+ on all transactions

I get 3% cash back, though.

Not credit card. Bank account. Webauthn/passkeys could also work for auth as they check the domain and can't be phished

Can't the attacker just man-in-the-middle to the real bank, and show the QR code to the phone?

Does the entire transaction take place on the phone? I don't think that's a good option.

I'm just not sure this directly competes with MC/Visa the way the article suggests.

Didn't other EU countries already have something similar to iDEAL, as opposed to using credit cards? And now we're just consolidating them?

Also, isn't this just about online payments? Who's going to pay for a coffee with either Wero or a credit card? AFAIK most EU consumers use direct debit cards for in-store payments (those countries where cash is no longer popular), be it via Apple Pay / Google Pay or not. Many a card of which by the way is directly or indirectly powered by Visa or Mastercard.

At any rate, I don't see EuroPA or Wero break the 'hegemony' of Visa/MC the way this article claims.

> At any rate, I don't see EuroPA or Wero break the 'hegemony' of Visa/MC the way this article claims.

You're right, it does not. But it's a significant step towards that goal. In-store payments are next on the agenda.

As usual if there is reasonable competition this limits what the established actors can and will do.

I can only speak for my countries, but almost all payment terminals now have the option to scan a QR code with your mobile banking app to pay using Wero.

That's good. Maybe I haven't seen it because direct debit via contactless (including Apple Pay) is faster, hence the default, where I am.

Banks and Visa/Mastercard probably love that you fill out your CC details on an online store, and next time you can just 1-click pay. Probably causes a big jump in revenue/profit. That's why they never innovated much.

Of course, it is incorrect, and digital payments everywhere (on a kiosk or online) should be intentional pushes, not pulls.

You could still have this 1-click experience with another system.

Like you could set some rule like “this vendor is approved for charges below $50”. We don’t need the legacy system for that.

(I don’t know if any payment systems can do that atm, just that if we wanted we could make them do that)

Visa seemed not to care too much about fraud though so at some level they do prefer ease of use over security

I want many payments to be pull-based (at least I'd go crazy having to positively sign off every utility bill and subscription), but the ideal user interface for pull payments shows who exactly is pulling what, with a few days notice, and a one-click way to cancel any standing authorization.

Something something capability-based finance something something

That still works. There are three entities: customer, bank and merchant.

The merchant should never be able to pull from your bank account. However, the merchant can send an invoice for a payment. Either the customer manually pushes the payment, or delegates to the bank that each invoice from merchant X should immediately result in a payment push [1].

The difference from the pull system is that the customer can at any point end this automatic push payment, but in the pull system the customer can only beg the merchant (eg. the gym) to stop charging their account.

[1] Or even better in an ideal world, delegate this pushing to their local finance app. So the bank can't put roadblocks for a customer cancelling a subscription.

> [...] the merchant can send an invoice for a payment. Either the customer manually pushes the payment, or delegates to the bank that each invoice from merchant X should immediately result in a payment push [1].

This already very close to how SEPA direct debits currently operate. I can instruct my bank with one click to stop honoring a given direct debit mandate (they'll then block all further payments under the same mandate reference), request any payment to be reversed for any reason (that I don't have to provide) etc.

The only difference to your suggested model is that the default is to honor all new mandates. I believe nothing – operationally or from a scheme perspective – prevents banks from requiring positive confirmation for every new mandate or even every single direct debit, though, and some banks (but not mine) even support this.

> in the pull system the customer can only beg the merchant (eg. the gym) to stop charging their account.

Not for SEPA direct debits, in any case.

My central problem is that in current pull based systems (both CC and direct debit), the merchant has access to the information to take money from my account. But that information can leak and someone else can take money from my account.

It's insane that digital systems are less secure than cash based system. If a merchant hands me a paper invoice, they can't just take cash out of my wallet.

The merchant should communicate to me where I need to deposit money, and I should put that into my system. The merchant should have little to no information about me.

> [...] the merchant has access to the information to take money from my account. But that information can leak and someone else can take money from my account.

Not in the implementation where any new merchant (or even new mandate reference of the same merchant, e.g. for two Netflix subscriptions pulling from the same account) has to be positively confirmed, which is possible in SEPA as I've described.

This is possible because, unlike cards, SEPA has no payment guarantee/chargeback protection at all. Otherwise, you'd indeed need some way of positively approving new recurring payment mandates.

This is actually how it works in India with "e-mandates".

In order to set up a recurring bill the merchant must get a "mandate" from the customer, which involves them approving the amount/frequency/term of the payment. The customer can at any time view a list of open mandates on their bank's web site/app and cancel any they wish. Recurring payments only succeed when the mandate remains valid.

The payment amount may be revised downward without getting a new mandate, but raising it up requires replacing the old mandate with a new one.

In order to make a non-initial charge the merchant must pre-authorize it with the bank a few days prior (handing the ID of mandate under which the charge is made to the bank), and pass the confirmation they get back from the bank when they do the real charge. The bank notifies the customer about the upcoming renewal and its amount.

IMO this is exactly how it should work.

The redirect to a bank is worrying, isn’t it trivial to fake redirecting to a fake bank ?

Not really, since in modern 3DS implementations, the redirect pretty much only shows a modal saying "check your phone for a notification and confirm this payment there".

Worst case, you'll be entering a one-time code received out of band, e.g. via SMS, and that message will mention what you are consenting to by entering it anywhere, so even MITM attacks are very hard.

The days of entering a static password in 3DS are long gone.

not really, the redirect itself is happening at EMV DS level, not by the merchant himself. Merchant has no idea what bank your card belongs to, so he does not know which bank to redirect you to.

You'll need to fake much more than just that. Usually the bank website will ask you to confirm the transaction by opening the banking app on your mobile phone.

Trading a dependency on MasterCard and Visa for one on Google and Apple is at best a sidegrade. More likely you end up worse off.

> Trading a dependency on MasterCard and Visa for one on Google and Apple is at best a sidegrade.

That's really not how it works. You as the user are prompted to pick the bank you want to use, and then your bank prompts you to approve the transaction.

The only scenario I can think of that might involve google or apple is if you want to use Android or iPhone for mobile payments with NFC.

Which part of "confirm the transaction by opening the banking app on your mobile phone." does not depend on a banking app installed on a Google/Apple-controlled environment?

When I'm redirected to my bank, my bank shows my account name and some details (including a custom per-device avatar). Spoofing that would require gathering these small details.

Some banks have a custom device to scan a QR code, where the device generates a signing token but also shows the transaction details too. Regrettably, these are not too common, despite being the safest variant.

What about authentication?

I remember living in Belgium this was the case, and I always had to go and find that stupid physical barcode reader that I then had to hold against the screen, sign in with my debit card, PIN, enter the Euro amount, and then sign the transaction.

Now that I live in the USA, I have my credit card number in Bitwarden, with expiration date and CVC.

When I want to buy something, I let it autofill, and I don't have to verify and / or sign any transactions, bar high price ones (e.g. new $5k TV from Best Buy).

And in terms of security? It's a credit card. I review my statement every month. If I didn't make the purchase I call the fraud department and the charge is removed. Last time I did that they didn't even ask me questions.

I'd take Apple pay over the old(?) EU system.

> I remember living in Belgium this was the case, and I always had to go and find that stupid physical barcode reader that I then had to hold against the screen, sign in with my debit card, PIN, enter the Euro amount, and then sign the transaction.

I can't talk about Belgium but from what I've read, the dutch iDeal system requires nothing of the sort. It seems to act as a broker between your bank and the business, and a user's input is limited to pick the bank you use and approve the payment through your bank's app.

When using the web interface some banks still offer the physical reader (which I prefer), but the banks are pushing hard to move to the phone app.

It used to be the case in the Netherlands with iDeal that you'd use your bank's e.dentifier for two factor auth (a physical device that you'd put your card into to get a code you could then put into the website to verify) - they replaced this with using your banking app sometime over the past 10 years.

The physical barcode reader is long gone in Belgium. Instead, you scan the QR code with your banking app (or on mobile, click a link to open the banking app), and either verify directly for amounts under €250 (?), or verify big amounts with ItsMe, another app, using Face ID.

Wero is super confusing. They're in the business of acquiring different methods (I don't even know if they always buy them outright or if they merge or they are just associated in some way), branding them ALL wero, and announcing that every payment in every channel will be rolled out SOON via wero, without ever offering specifics.

So in The Netherlands wero is the new name of eCommerce payments, but in another country the new name for peer2peer. But no idea when p2p will launch in the Netherlands or when eCommerce will launch elsewhere. And if the existing services will be degraded when they are internationalized or merged.

iDEAL is a killer name

iDeal is superb and the most convenient payment method I've dealt with.

Wero claims that they won't support paying through a browser, and that it will be tied to either Google or Apple, which seems like a huge step back from iDeal in its currents state.

I wrote about this a few months back (including actual sources for their claims): https://whynothugo.nl/journal/2026/02/25/entrenching-america...

In fact a unique payment ID (e.g QR) to "push" payment is even safer. No redirect. That's how payment should be. Not an authorization given to pull from us, but the agency for us to push the amount.

If I am understanding you correct, isn't this what UPI does already?

Yes. Common among Asian countries. Where authorizing a 3rd party to pull money isn't natural. Among the main reasons Uber failed there.

In fact, there is EPC code, but it is rarely used and bank support is abysmal, at least in our country. But that can also be because we have some homegrown local standard for payment QR codes (and a new one in the works, lol).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPC_QR_code

This is exactly what India's UPI (Unified Payments Interface) works. No PII, just a UPI ID is given and the user gets a push notification in Android/iOS app for approval (with PIN or security enclave like fingerprint).

We already have a unique payment system though: SEPA QRC. They include the IBAN and some payment details.

there's the polish BLIK which is basically the same idea and there are probably a dozen more in other countries; need consolidation in this space tbh

This is one of the reasons I opt for PayPal in the US when I have the choice. I've been in too many breaches. Direct to bank would be better, but I trust PayPal's security more than a random ecommerce website's security.

I caution PayPal would only work if you trusted the original shopping site, and perhaps your "credentials" got breached and used illicitly elsewhere. I got banned from PayPal after I tried to buy an electrical switch, was on an (apparently scam) website, never received the item, and opened a PayPal dispute. The scammer somehow convinced PayPal the item I tried to buy was illegal/against PayPal ToS, which resulted in them banning *me* instead of the scammer.

On the other hand, I see an unknown charge on my credit-card, dispute with my bank, and it's handled.

No way on PayPal,venmo, or any company associated with Paypal... I got screwed over with an unauthorized transaction on my credit card that was attached to a PayPal account... They refused to acknowledge the transaction as unauthorized... My Credit Card that was charged (Amex) on the otherhand, reversed the transaction within 24hours

In Denmark i currently have to enter my card details but then, i get a popup where i have to enter my government issued ID username and scan a QR code from the related app (or enter from a 2fa token generator)

Its annoying - but it feels quite secure

Most online merchants redirect me to my bank's web page when I enter my Visa credit card number. In theory it should be possible to have a card number that by itself is useless and always requires an external confirmation?

with a mastercard from a swedish bank that is the experience that i get. all online transactions pop up a page from my back with qr code, this is authenticated through an app that shows me the transaction details and requires pin confirmation.

> Wero is basically an EU-wide version of the Dutch iDeal system, which in my opinion is the gold standard of how internet payment should work.

For some reason, most Dutch people are convinced that the way things work in the Netherlands is the gold standard of how things should work in general, and are very hostile to solutions from other countries even if those solutions are better by any sensible metric. This is especially painful when a less developed country does leaps around NL in some aspect, like:

1. In Poland, you don't need to carry any documents with you because if policeman stops you, he has access the police database anyway. This includes driving license.

2. Even if you really want to show a document, you can do it gasp on your phone screen with the official government app.

3. Albert Heijn, the most popular supermarket chain, started accepting Visa and MasterCard in 2023. Not in 2003, in fucking 2023.

4. The adoption of paczkomaty is pathetic and when you have a delivery the expectation is that you're supposed to sit and wait the entire day at home.

5. iDeal launched 2005. Przelewy24 launched in 2004. They function in exactly the same way.

/rant? :-)

1. sounds nice though! But how do they verify that it's actually you? Just matching the photo manually? People are terrible at that. Or do they scan a fingerprint?

> Just matching the photo manually?

Yes.

> People are terrible at that.

"Imperfect" doesn't mean "terrible".

3. Yeah, the previous system we used was just too cheap and efficient. Credit cards are still not common.

4. We're indeed a bit later than elsewhere, but there are many now.

In reply to .3: bancontact is nearly free per operation, but credit card were percentage heavy fee per transaction... That's why. And don't forget that the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg will prefer debit over credit for payment.

Don't forget that the banking world is still under a lot of pressure from the various government (systemic risk assessment for example) and the stakeholders. It's a mess!

Yes, I've heard this explanation many times.

Suppose you have a double Debit/Credit card issued in Poland and you're doing typical shopping for €10 on your way home. You use your card, it presents itself as a debit card, which means that the maximum transaction fee is capped at 0,2% as per EU regulation in effect since mid-2015, so you're paying whole two cents for that transaction. Truly life-changing amount of wealth.

Suppose that you're average Johan and your net salary is €2830. Let's assume that half of that is spent on various types of shopping - this means you spend €1415 a month, which means that each month the card company takes €2,83 from you. I don't know what about you, but if I had €2,83 extra each month, I'd immediately feel ultra-rich.

My Dutch bank account costs €4,30 while my Polish bank accounts are free.

You might say "but anal_reactor, what if tragedy happens and the card shows itself as a credit card, not a debit card?"

I have to admit, you have a point. These fees can be 50% higher capped at 0,3% which means that such average Johan would spend €4,25 on card fees each month. As we all know, €4,25 is more than €4,30 by "negative five cents".

I'm sorry, but if "credit cards are expensive" is your best argument against dual Debit/Credit cards working in NL then you are truly retarded and god be my witness I'm stating this as a fact, not an insult.

Instead, the payment should redirect me to my bank, where I authorize the payment through my own bank's security system.

That is really cool. I would like to see that system in the US given that my bank has IP restrictions for my account. I would also like the ability to pre-approve specific vendors for specific amounts within each bank as a native service all banks should support.

> I shouldn't have to fill in any card numbers on the site of the merchant (which is unsafe). Instead, the payment should redirect me to my bank, where I authorize the payment through my own bank's security system.

To be honest with multiple banks in Germany, without Wero, works like that too..

One thing that surprises me a lot is that in order to use Wero with my ING account, I have to give access to my contacts, which I ultimately am not going to do. I wonder how the European payment system can be so ignorant of their customers' privacy.

That has nothing to do with Wero, that's just your bank (ING) being stupid.

Providing credit cards online even by phone for 20 years I have never had any issues, or known anyone who had issues. The few occasions my cards were compromised (all my own fault): a restaurant in Vienna pre Covid when cash was king in Europe, I insisted to use the card and the waiter took it inside lol. Got a 4000k cruise booked a few weeks later. Another time at an ATM in Brazil, I even noticed the suspects around the machines waiting and still went for it. A gas station ATM in NYC. That’s about it. Every time I called the bank and they refunded the money. So what I’m saying is security doesn’t seen to be a big issue in the US when it comes to online transactions with credit cards. Of course this is all subjective from my own experiences, but I’m kind of reckless using cards so I’m probably a good test subject.

try getting a refund for fraudulent card charge in other countries except the US.... most other banks in LATAM/EU will not simply "refund" you the money.

Individual experience is rarely an accurate representation of the broader system.

But most people here don't want credit cards; risk of spending what you don't have just works differently over there outside mortgages. And then this new stuff is just objectively better: debit cards, even though you will get the money back mostly, makes it a hassle as you basically pay the lowest fees possible and never credit so fraud really sucks. And makes no sense; away with those cards; we do not need them anymore.

> Instead, the payment should redirect me to my bank, where I authorize the payment through my own bank's security system.

That's basically Paypal and everyone still shits on them.

paypal goes to great lengths to not be regulated as a bank, right?

I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain about the actual PayPal payments flow. Most complaints are around seizing large balances due to suspected fraud...

I recommend also have a look at how eCommerce is done in Chile, e.g. Transbank (WebPay), FinToc and others. Chile passed some very good FinTech legislation a few years ago.

It works very good and user-friendly, but iDeal had a disadvantage: chargebacks aren't possible. Whether Wero has the same issue, I do not know.

Making a note of this as an obvious technical alliance that should have existed for decades.

I thought it was an EU wide version of the belgian PayConiq

Does this work as a credit card system or for debit only?

I'm annoyed by redirects that won't work if you set a different default browser or incognito mode as default for new tabs. Total BS.

Card numbers just work.

Also, payment "apps" that pack their own web engine and need 300-500 megs D/L, plus refuse to run on rooted / "unvetted" systems. No fucks given! Go away, give a browser and numbers.

Perfect opportunity for browser or OS API to provide the feature, where we could make it more streamlined, secure, and consistent.

I like the friction to decide against frivolous spending...

If you don't set a default browser, you'll be prompted what browser to open redirects and such in every time.

Unfortunately you still can't easily distinguish between normal browsing and private browsing that way (though browsers could implement that in theory), but I ran that setup for a while back when Firefox couldn't integrate with the App Tabs or whatever it's called where Android apps have their own minimal UI around a full screen web view (which used to always be Chrome).

Card numbers don't work because the business receiving the payment doesn't automatically get a signal from the bank when payments come in without an annoyingly complicated banking integration, which is exactly what these new services intend to solve. They do work for the consumer in some cases, and I have been paying for some online services with regular old bank transfers in cases where I didn't need a payment to go through the same day. That doesn't mean it's an equivalent system in most cases.

If your banking app doesn't run on your device because of something as silly as root detection, you should find a better bank.

How does the website know which bank to redirect to?

A dropdown is offered and the choice is remembered.

That’s how giro payments work. Same for Klarna.

as it was the case in Baltic states since forever. Payments with CC came much later.

iDeal is terrible for fraud. Consumers have to file a police report.

Indeed, it's terrible for fraud, as fraudsters are more likely to land behind bars.

Sure, but nowhere near as easy as filling a dispute on most other payment networks.

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