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Comment by wkoszek | Hacker News Reader

PayPal might still be the sweetheart, but there's no innovation I feel. With eBay having CC support and being able to charge and return a charge back to the card, PayPal now is in a niche. I'm helping a founder recruit. To handle the load of candidates, we give folks applying some $ for doing a small 1hr project, and Claude told me that PayPal may still be universal way of sending a "gift amounts". I often wonder how much work would it be to bring IBAN accounts to the US. The need for Zelle baffles me, and the fact that person A can't send $ to person B via normal bank infrastructure is interesting.

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> Claude told me that PayPal may still be universal way of sending a "gift amounts

Meanwhile in china you just scan a qr code.

In europe you just send money to their IBAN or they send you a link

Instant payments, no commission...

> In europe you just send money to their IBAN or they send you a link

You can, but at least in Germany people are reluctant to give their IBAN to others and prefer one degree of separation, so PayPal is still very common for transfers between friends.

> in Germany people are reluctant to give their IBAN to others

Are they worried people might send them money without their permission?

An IBAN can be used to take money via SEPA direct debit.

Which is the problem. Why does something like this even exist?

Because it's a convenient lower tech solution where you don't need to be a merchant with access to the debit card system to get monthly (or one-off) money, and it's easy to take or give back money. As other comments say, it's also trivial to claim back a fraudulent charge, it's exposed directly in every online bank system UI.

In Switzerland the concept of a "Einzugsermächtigung" exists too, but it's a step or two more than just knowing your IBAN.

Basically you do this with your bank and not the other way around with the merchant.

Is it common to check all your banking stuff every month to make sure there is nothing fraudulent? I don't see how this is practical

I get notified of all SEPA direct debit requests and need to approve them, only for recurring payments.

Perhaps other banks don't do this and that is the problem.

My wife recently filled out a SEPA-Lastschriftmandat for an account in my name and all she needed was my name, IBAN address and a signature. Name and Address is semi-public and signatures can be faked. I'm no financial criminal but I would be shocked if there was no attack vector that gets enabled from knowing an IBAN and a name.

The thing is, burden of proof is with the bank. For a lastschrift, you have 8 weeks to reverse it, if you didn't actually sign the Ermächtigung, you have 13 months.

Unless you don't care what transfers happen, that's pretty much always enough time

I am not worried about the money staying gone forever and I have ample cash reserves, but I can imagine that someone who might have to worry about a bouncing rent wire or electricity bill would be more worried about their safety cushion potentially being gone until they get it fixed with their bank.

I had a situation where my mortgage took money from my account, but used the wrong company/reference name.

I didn't know what it was so I clicked a few buttons in the app and the money was back instantly.

That was on Commerzbank. Dunno if others are the same!

The issue is more "I checked my account yesterday, I have 600€ on there, so I know the 150€ utilities bill due today is not an issue" and then a weird withdrawal happens and all of a sudden the utilities payment bounces. Even if i get the money back instantly once I notice it theres still the issue that now I have to deal with a bounced payment to a utilities provider.

But no company cares about an occasional failed payment? That's part of doing business?

So they send a polite email informing you of it and you pay it a few days late?

No reasonable entity would charge late fees as that's a great way to anger otherwise perfect customers?

But again, I am not talking about myself, im talking about the hyptothetical person who might not be the perfect customer. My in-laws have had their gas cut more than once because of non-payments, or were only allowed to keep the gas running because they told them "we will wire you the last 3 unpaid invoices at once on day x".

For me to personally end up in this situation the bank would need to somehow SEPA out like 2 years worth of mortgages at once in a short timeframe, which is not a realistic scenario.

If you have an app, you'll notice immediately that a payment bounced, via notification. If not, you'll get a letter informing you that it bounced.

Also: it takes A LOT of letters and court orders for them to cut your utilities. I'm not joking, it's more than a couple of Mahnungs, then it goes to debt collection, then it goes to court. The court will then take the money out of your account.

That's all before power gets cut.

It definitely won't be because of a single missed payment.

Even in the situation above: if your in-laws somehow had no balance "at once on day x" because of a fake SEPA, they would be able to reverse via app, or go to the bank and reverse.

Justified fear. A former flat mate of mine reported an unexpected outgoing transfer to his UK bank and they blocked his account for 3 months. He was essentially unbanked. He had to pay his rent in cash after getting it from an ATM with a credit card (which cost a lot extra and hit limits). Resolving it took months even though we lived right next to a branch of that bank, where he went every day.

In Germany you'd be afraid to reverse lastschrift because if by some accident it's legit, the companies like service providers will go berserk at you.

It takes ~2 weeks to resolve and will cost you tens of Euros. The biggest threat is that they won't want to deal with you anymore, at least for a while. Happened to a flatmate of mine 15ish years ago.

I'm certain that it also involves receiving and sending a letter.

Pray its not a fax.

Letters are why it takes so long, yes

I wouldn’t be afraid, but I also wouldn’t reverse a legit one. When you do that, you get sent to collections, which makes sense.

Paypal (as an example) only asks for the name and IBAN and they do identity verification themselves, by depositing (!) a small amount of money on your account.

But yeah, it's a very high-trust society. Of course any charge can be reverted via your bank app in seconds. But it's still a nuisance to have to check, so people are wary of giving it away.

It's not high trust society. In Germany service providers have easy and instant access to your bank account. Like TSA to your body on American airports. They absolutely don't trust that someone will voluntarily make monthly bank transfer, so I'd call it zero-trust system.

In USA a company that knows your bank account number can withdraw money from it.

They're financially incentivized to behave, but that's it. The ability is there.

It depends.

Telecoms, kinda. They will try to force this on you via contract. You can say no, but they will lie to your face that it's impossible. You can always get a pre-paid, too. I witnessed the same situation (forced by contract) in some Gyms as well.

Vatenfall and other electric companies, the government itself, banks, landlords, Hausverwaltung, all are surprisingly chill about which payment method you use.

But then again, Telecoms and Gyms are always trying to cheat and steal from you in every country that I lived, that I'd call this the exception to the rule.

The IBAN is also used for paying online by debit note. So somebody who knows your IBAN can theoretically buy stuff using your bank account. You can easily reclaim that money, but still there is hassle involved.

> The IBAN is also used for paying online by debit note

How does that even work?

You open an account somewhere and when you pay they sneak in consent for direct debit with some dark pattern.

there are notifications and approvals in bank apps now, they can't take the money until you accept there too and you can revoke from there as well

i don't want their mobile app

do it on the website then?

or dont do anything and direct debit by default doesnt work

In the early days of eBay I exchanged money exclusively via bank transfer and had no worries, but for me the Internet has changed and these days I use PayPal to send and receive money from strangers. I see it like this: My email address is already public, so I'm not risking anything when I share it with strangers. My IBAN on the other hand is only known to a few respectable companies, so why change that? Seeing all the online platforms store all your PII without hesitation, but keeping your IBAN only as ****** and handing it straight to a trusted payment processor always reminds me that it's not like the others. Yes, I know businesses put their IBAN on their letter head, but they also have accountants watching their transactions.

In some MAJOR banks (not gonna say which one), the last digits of the IBAN are also used as username.

So basically people outside can lock your online account.

I am shocked by how F** dumb this was ever designed.

a user name should not be something that needs to be kept secret. If that is the case, the bank fucked up in my eyes...

Yes, because you can also debit money from IBAN :) Without consent of owner. Not sure how this works.

If you have the right authorisation on a business account you can "direct debit" from any account. It let's you charge a bank account in a similar way as a US creditcard can be charged by number and expiry date. Technically the contract with your bank says you need to have a signed authorisation from the account owner to charge their account, but you don't have to show it to the bank before charging.

The money you get that way isn't guaranteed, the account owner could do a charge back. And if that happens you have to show the signed authorisation from the account owner. If you don't have it, expect your bank to terminate the direct debit ability.

Many countries including European now have just scan a QR code. The EU payment scheme Wero is bringing that cross-border for EUR. Instant and very low fees.

SEPA transfers are zero fees by law.

And instant (under 10 seconds)

Not by default. Deutsche Bank for instance makes you select it and I'm guessing most people are afraid that choosing instant means a fee so they leave it off.

Most banks did charge a fee at first, so this rollout is partly to blame for the option being available and the hesitancy.

There was another European payment system change to remove* the fees for real-time (official name) transfers, roughly a year ago. Together with the removal of international fees 10? years ago, it is indeed instant (if you check the box) and free across the EU now.

IIRC, real-time transfers commonly used to cost 50 cents (flat).

* Technically, they aren't allowed to cost more than regular transfers which cost 0 in ~all retail accounts

No, they are not.

Just checked, by EU law, banks cannot charge more for a SEPA euro transfer than they do for a local transfer within your own country.

... which boils down to 0 fees on any side for any transaction I've ever done, across quite a few countries in EU and to/from Switzerland. I don't think any sane retail bank dares to charge anything, people would migrate to competition in an instant.

Some business accounts charge a 20 to 50 cent flat fee. I think mine does. Retail basically never, yes.

Yes, this is pretty standard for business accounts.

there were some exceptions though, like in Greece, where banks charged for every sepa transaction. not sure if that's still the case.

I have an account in Denmark which charges for outgoing transactions, 3 DKK. (€0.40.)

I think I have the choice to pay a monthly fee, nominate it as my official account for receiving my salary, or pay for the transactions.

I choose the last option as it's a backup account, and I make perhaps 1 transaction per year.

I don't use Wero, yet, but I'm not really convinced when I read about it. Firstly, it lets anyone lookup the name associated with a phone number or email address, which is a privacy nightmare. Secondly, only a single bank account can be used with a phone number or email. This just seems badly designed.

I'm from Europe and like Paypal a lot for paying for things online; much easier than using a credit card.

Paying with CC: typing the 16 digits of the CC, expiration date, 'CVC', and then having your phone nearby for confirmation. Happens on a myriad of forms from various providers that may or may not save or log the CC number. Many times the text message doesn't arrive on time on your phone, which makes the transaction fail. Or you have reached your credit card 'limit' and the transaction also fails (without you knowing why).

Paying with Paypal: username and password (or password only if the username is saved), done. Happens only on the Paypal website. Funds are withdrawn immediately from your bank account if you want. Never fails.

For me it's slightly more convenient than manually entering CC details, but still less convenient than Apple/Google Pay where that's supported.

European here, can't agree at all. Never, ever had the confirmation SMS not arrive. Even when I have literally 0 bars signal and just wifi, it just works here.

Those few buys per week I can enter CC numbers directly, I don't mind since its my money being spent. Don't need some questionable middle man if I can avoid that.

Same here, Germany. PayPal with immediate bank transfer is usually a little more convenient. I use CC more often anyway to avoid the middle man, but when I feel lazy (wallet is not on my desk, oh no) or there is any hassle with CC, I use PayPal.

It's crazy how much they have enshittified credit cards. It's not stuff like CVC, that's fine, but all the random failures! Nothing will turn me off your "payment system" more than having it randomly fail on me for utterly incomprehensible reasons when I'm simply trying to pay. It's five times worse when you are traveling, buying some small items in a shop and have it fail at the register.

I honestly don't know the last time I've had a credit card transaction fail, including internationally, unless I've fat-fingered some number. In fact, in my experience, random fraud failures are significantly less common than they used to be.

Less common but they still happen and except for a few banks that have modernized the failures are still much more cumbersome to deal with than necessary.

Worse I had stripe trip on me the other day which resulted in a "card declined" message but when I logged into the bank to authorize there was nothing there. Because apparently stripe decided not to even notify the bank of the suspected fraud. Thus there was seemingly no way for me to correct the error.

I can't even use tap to pay without either a physical chip from the bank or proprietary software. We've had ssh keys and oauth since ~forever there's no excuse for any of this.

I find it very interesting that on a site like this, someone advocates for payments with just a username/password.

This might work for you, but it's not a solution for less tech savvy/elderly people. These services are the easiest to scam people out of money on.

I also love the fact that it allows me to use a US credit card on EU websites that would otherwise block me from using non EU credit cards (by detecting BIN).

iDeal/Wero is nicer I think. It just reuses your bank basically. And no need to trust Paypal. I've seen way too many bad stories about that company. Either dispute handling wise or how they handle customer data. With iDeal/Wero I do not need yet another account.

For some reason PayPal is still quite big in Germany; about 28% of online revenue in 2025.

Also Austria, perhaps Italy, but I have less direct experience there.

In Germany, it’s not uncommon for people to not have a credit card. For online purchases, it’s therefore easier to use PayPal at checkout because a direct IBAN transfer or debit card might not be accepted by the merchant. Also for splitting smaller amounts among friends and family (less of a moat because this could be done in principal by a SEPA transfer).

In other countries Revolut is popular for the friends and family bill splitting, in places like Sweden they have a PayPal-like solution offered by local banks. There’s an upcoming initiative by Brussels to bring all these national initiatives under one umbrella, which would definitely hurt PayPal’s German revenue in future.

But you have a Visa/Mastercard, surely? A thing with 16 digits that you can plug into the Stripe checkout screen?

I have, but never use, a 'credit card'. The thing I use every day is a 'debit card', where the money comes straight from my account. But it still has 16 digits and Visa written on the front.

Germany: Younger people yes, older people no. They wouldn't know the difference between credit and debit card and everything that looks like a credit card is an invention from hell and instant debt-spiral to them.

In 2019, only 20% of Germans had a Visa/Mastercard. The vast majority of Germans used the German GiroCard network, as many vendors refused Visa/Mastercard due to the higher fees (2-3% vs GiroCard's 0.125%), and there was no real need for it. Even 2019 you had to pay 30-50€/year fee just for a debit MasterCard/Visa, as Germans rarely used them and rarely went into overdraft, so there was little profit to be made.

Since then MasterCard has tried to force banks into dropping GiroCard, by refusing to work with smaller banks that still support GiroCard, and by offering better conditions to larger banks that drop GiroCard.

This has increased the number of Germans with Visa/MasterCard, but it's still below 50%.

Mind blown. Thanks. I'm British and I've had a debit card since I was 16 which is a loooooong time ago now, let me tell you.

In the UK, purchases made with a credit card are much more protected than a debit card.

If the supplier goes out of business / fails to deliver, the bank/credit card company is equally liable. A Section 75 claim is allowed for purchases between £100 and £30,000.

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumers/complaints-...

The equivalent in Britain would be a Switch card in the 1990s, the UK's native debit card system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switch_(debit_card)

AFAIK, it's actually the "not-really-banks" that don't have Girocard: N26, Revolut, bunq, Vivid, Trade Republic, Wise, Tomorrow, Openbank.

All the traditional large ones seem to have AFAIK.

Off topic but I really hate N26 and its ilk. They don't really follow the German laws that say that German residents can have bank accounts, so they refuse people that are still on work visas, which is a pain in the fucking ass when you have a startup and the young employees are telling the immigrants "get N26" or something else, but the immigrants can't have it and only learn after submitting lots of docs to N26.

How did you get N26 to check your visa? I’ve never seen that situation. They only ask for an address in Germany. I know so many people with n26 on work visa

Careful: Work Visa is not the same as Residence Permit.

They check during the KYC process via mobile phone camera, and will reject people without a residence permit (Aufenthaltserlaubnis, Blue Card, etc), and they claim several things, from "we don't accept work visas" to "I never saw this document in my life".

Legally, a work visa is an Aufenthaltserlaubnis according to § 4 AufenthG, so N26 is classifying it wrongly here.

But it gets worse because they're breaking § 31 ZKG, which says they're obligated to provide an account for everyone here legally. We have formally complained to BAFIN about it.

Just copied the above law paragraphs from an HR discussion, btw, this is a recurring issue...

And I know this from helping several others, since I'm the startup ecosystem. I'm European, but not German.

I do have a credit card for emergencies but I haven't used in years. It's in the drawer, I didn't even integrate it with Apple Pay.

My Girocard has Maestro integration, so I can use it overseas, but no number. Apparently this is gonna go away.

The Girocard naturally has ApplePay, which is what I use daily.

What are you talking about - merchants not accepting debit cards? It's best option for them.

People used to use Paypal because they have only debit cards. But with better card security and alternatives like SEPA and Wero there is way less need.

Wero is just starting on B2C, many business accounts still don't offer it. Not yet comparable to PayPal when talking purchases.

> For some reason PayPal is still quite big in Germany; about 28% of online revenue in 2025.

Many Germans don't have credit cards (I don't), so PayPal is pretty convenient as it can withdraw directly from a SEPA account and enables online shopping.

Google Pay cannot do SEPA, but allows adding PayPal as a payment method, so PayPal also gets you into the Google purchase ecosystem.

Revolut with its virtual CCs has been making some inroads lately, though.

Paypal is somewhat common in Italy for lunch-money amounts, a few local alternatives are available (sumUp and Satispay mainly) but for anything more than 100€ everybody uses SEPA transfers.

PayPal is the only real company to offer any meaningful support to customers targeted by fraud or in a real dispute with a company. Banks screw customers and for cards you are at the mercy of mastercard/visa and a long wait period for the dispute.

PayPal is far far away from a niche, although this depends on the market. I work for a company in Europe selling physical goods and the vas majority of our sales online are paid with PayPal. The reason their future is not that bright is that things like Apple Pay and Google Pay are starting to eat their lunch because it's just that easy. You pay with e.g. Google Pay, verify your fingerprint and you're done. No logins, no typing, no stored passwords or credit cards that sometimes don't autofill correctly. So the writing is on the wall for the future, but they are still a money machine in the present day.

The only thing easier than paying with a fingerprint is not paying at all. So their lifeline could be agentic shopping where you don't even shop anymore if this can ever become a thing.

If a site has PayPal as a payment method, I'm using PayPal. It's a million times more convenient than punching my CC into yet another site.

I don't use mobile wallets. I've had a PP account since the time it was required to buy anything on Ebay.

The best feature it has is being able to cancel newspaper subscriptions without the hassle of calling and talking to a retention agent.

For as long as criminals believe they can hide in relative anonymity (e-mail, stolen CC and burner phone being sufficient authorization) and high volume of transactions PayPal will remain with us. It’s a great way to do small cash like transactions without going to crypto. Some crimes still need to source cash.

I have had more money stolen from me by PayPal than any scammer.

I've always been baffled when friends return from the US talking about how hard it was to simply move dollars from one person to the other without using hard currency, how is this a thing in the modern world?

> I often wonder how much work would it be to bring IBAN accounts to the US

It is 2026, in USA people are not having access to IBAN in their bank accounts, usually they have to be personally present for international transfers out of their accounts and everyone have a checkbook.

IBAN is less adopted than I expected -- Europe, the Middle East and progressing in Africa, plus a few others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bank_Account_Num...

Zelle is an ACH frontend. It is using normal bank infrastructure.

Zelle has absolutely never had anything to with ACH, because it's typically instant (within seconds). ACH tends to take hours to days.

Technically yes, because Zelle is just the frontend, but banks can settle between themselves via ACH if they don't have another arrangement or a RTP (real time payment) setup.

To answer the original question, because Zelle is ran by a consortium of banks, they all trust each other enough to release funds immediately and settle up overnight if need be.

Zelle isn't the ACH or RTP though, is what I'm saying. Zelle is the real-time notifications and accounting, but the reason every bank needs to have bespoke support is because it's each bank's job to figure out how to do the actual funds transfers in the background after Zelle payments go through.

I'm lovin' RTP. I've used it a few times between IBKR and Chase and it works very well, even for some hefty sums.

https://www.paymentsdive.com/news/rtp-fed-race-on-fast-payme...

The past several transactions I've done with Zelle, it has taken 3-5 days for the money to arrive. This was with a contact I sent money to before using Zelle (my brother), and also a new contact. I'm surprised because my experience has always been Zelle was instant. Has something changed with Zelle? The bank I am using is Ally.

Nothing's changed with Zelle AFAIK, but the time it takes depends on the sending bank, the receiving bank, the amount of money, the history of both parties, arbitrary fraud metrics decided by both banks and EWS themselves and some other things. Sometimes they just decide that your transfer won't be instant.

I mistakenly opened a Bank of America account last year, but they had so many fraud protections on Zelle it was nearly impossible to use without constantly getting transfers held up for days and having to make phone calls to banking support to approve transactions and verify my identity, and it was such an absolute nightmare I will never ever bank with them again or recommend them to anybody. The worst part was absolutely the phone calls, I could never dismiss or approve anything online I always had to make a phone call during business hours.

Then I moved to US Bank and they support instant Zelle transfers, recurring Zelle transfers (which both my credit union and Capital One didn't support!), approving fraud alerts online and more, the only way I could be happier with them is if they had less security theater (like Mercury) but I'll be moving to Mercury anyway once they support Zelle.

Zelle payments, under certain circumstances, will be converted to ACH transfers vs RTP instant payments. Typically, this will occur with higher risk payments (unseasoned contacts or high value transfer amounts) or when the destination is an unenrolled participant in the Zelle ecosystem.

US bank accounts don't have IBAN? I thought IBAN numbers were part of the whole Swift system that Russia got locked out of. Shows how much I know about this stuff...

Does https://usedots.com/ fit your purpose?

How does it compare to Wise/Payoneer and other existing payment transfer systems?

Its on top and provides multieple different options and required reporting as well. Basically for any payout usecase it should be way better.

> but there's no innovation I feel.

WTF, I want my payments to work, no “innovation” necessary.

Wait what? How are you then going to send someone money?! If not through the bank? What special USA feature is this?

Its crazy, every time I am in the US and a group needs to split a bill its a absurd debate over which third party payments provider to use.

I've even had people refuse cash because they want me to "venmo" them or whatever stupid app they prefer.

Isn't "split the bill" something that the restaurant does?

Yes but a lot of people just use apps. It's weird.

Americans are super weird about dining procedures and expectations. Remember, we tip here. It's weird.

Most of Europe tips too, and increasingly there is a service charge too (at least in the UK it has become standard now).

According to this list it doesn't seem like most of Europe tips too

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tipping_customs_by_cou...

In your list it says 13 out of the 18 countries tipping is customary or expected. France and Spain are not among those, which tracks with my experience.

Sometimes. In USA they may require one check for parties of >N (where N can be 6). Some (fancy) places won't split at all. Then consumers juggle apps to square up the deal.

> the fact that person A can't send $ to person B via normal bank infrastructure is interesting.

I would call that outrageous. It is my money. I earned it. I paid taxes on it. Let me fucking use it.

That is what I like about crypto. What I have is actually mine. I can send it to whomever I want at any time.

Who considers PayPal a sweetheart?! PayPal is by far one of the most heinous companies I have interacted with on a regular basis.

Outside the US many banks offer simple QR payment options, the direct transfer difficulties US citizens encounter that make services like PayPal and Zelle necessary are entirely self imposed.

PayPal is Intuit of the payment processor world.

Paypal has actively lobbied for legislation(or lack of) in ways that has hurt American consumers.

100%. They had a place back when banks barely knew what the internet was.

But I think their time has passed.

Agree that nobody considers it a sweetheart but you're wrong on the ex-US issue. Paypal is big in Germany for instance and I literally know nobody who uses Paypal in the US (maybe for eBay stuff??)

Probably not very long. Multiple companies, including Amazon, started supporting Wero for payments. And most banks already support it. You scan a QR code or open a link that opens your bank app, show your fingerprint, see the amount and which account and to who, and you approve. Very easy and costs nothing to the seller nor the buyer.

Next year we'll get this in the physical stores...

You’re overestimating their ability to change. I still regularly have to pay in cash in many businesses here in Berlin.

Wero is a great start but I suspect that PayPal will stay around for many more years.

At the same time you’re underestimating it. Before covid almost no small businesses would offer card payment; now it’s common.

Sure there are some that are against digital payments and they won’t accept Wero neither, but I would argue the number is very small. And sure in bars/clubs/nightlife it’s cash only but that also won’t change - it’s for tax reasons.

People don’t like PayPal and only use it for the lack of a better alternative. EC is widely used and I bet that Wero will be as well.

Source: lived last 15 years in Berlin

As a principal I boycott places that only accepts cash in Berlin. There is absolutely no reason for them to accept money only in cash in 2026, except for tax evasion and money laundering

What about a principled stance that a payment should remain anonymous, without being logged by a domestic bank, let alone a foreign company.

I used to go to a bar in Copenhagen with that principle.

Read my comment again. I said I boycott places that only accepts cash. They can absolutely accept both cards and cash and the only reason they do that is to not pay taxes. I would rather everyone pay taxes without any exceptions

I understood it.

The bar with the privacy principle didn't accept cards, and had a sign to that effect on the bar.

> There is absolutely no reason for them to accept money only in cash in 2026,

When I was young, cash was beloved by some as a matter of principle because of the fact you didn't need any authority's permission to accept it; coupled with its anonymity.

If you were running the city's only LGBT bookshop, you didn't want your till full of signed, dated checks - and card processors wouldn't do business with you even if you wanted to accept cards.

I don’t mind if they accept cash, but my problem is that some places ONLY accepts cash. That’s purely to evade taxes

Or perhaps it's a matter of principle. They think that digital payments take society in a dangerous direction so do their part to push back against that and raise awareness.

Yeah right. For profit businesses being altruistic and moral. Delusional much?

There are tens of thousands of those, yes. Pretending these don't exist, edgy nihilism much?

I didn't realize that obtaining a business license caused one to immediately lose sight of his core values and morph into a comic book villain.

Privacy.

Stalkers.

Abusive ex’s.

And if you think it’s assholes targeted this way, look at all the women being stalked via flock by cops.

And if you think finances aren’t abused the same way, why do you think the Germans are so worked up about this? The fucking stasi.

A certain type of person will use literally anything they can find against you, including to harass you if they literally can’t find anything you did wrong.

And what better for them than a nice list of all the places and people you have some kind of important vendor or business relationship with - which is why there is money changing hands.

Grocery stores. Gas stations/subway fees, rental payments or mortgage payments. restaurants, gifts or family transfers, work, you name it.

I don’t know who traumatised you, but you need therapy, not cash payments

Cash payments are great therapy.

Also, ask an older German if you think I’m kidding.

What about costs? For low margin businesses, especially small ones, the cost of card payments is significant.

Was true in 2016, but not in 2026.

Likely casual tax fraud

What, why would you need Wero for that? That would just be an EPC-QR-Code using SEPA. Wero is just some cancer in between to sniff off user emails and phone numbers in my eyes.

Since banks want a product they can sell.

The European Central Bank is working on regulation regarding the "Digital Euro" which is a bit in a marketing hype loop using block chain and other terms as a hype, while fundamentally trying to come up with a Euro-Zone-Wide approach to create a mostly anonymous digital currency, with some offline capability. If they come up with a final working concept paper, this would become legally mandated with low charges.

Wero is a product by banks, trying to be faster. Trying to have an established platform under their control, which is well established before ECB is ready with D€.

Part of this is just the banking here in Germany being so bad. Fast ('instant') transfers are relatively new for many banks, online banking has always been quite poor/limited, and many of the cards they used to offer were Girocard (or Maestro) and didn't work with online retailers. Paypal has always been a great buffer to those problems.

Well, to be fair, even for many customers 'instant' transfers are new. Even if their bank offers them for months now. Some folks still consider 'online banking' a novelty.

In 2015 when I still lived in South Africa, you could do near-instant online transfers - but there is/was a cost involved (I think about $0.45 for transactions under $250). Online banking was super common then, I imagine it's become even more so in the last 10 years. I was quite shocked by how outdated the German banking system was, although it's definitely improved in many ways in the last decade.

Even in 2006, in Australia you could do interbank transfers with near instant availability (certainly within 60s), usually for free.

In 1995 I could give anyone in Germany my PostBank konto number and they could “wire” me money by calling the bank.

In 2026 I pay contractors working on my US house by logging into my bank and instructing it to mail a paper check.

The only exception is Venmo which everyone expects will be enshittified.

That’s interesting, because every time there’s something about a money transfer service, there are a ton of posts saying “Oh, the United States is so backwards, in Europe you could do this forever.” Apparently, by Europe, they mean the particular place they happen to live in.

Europe isn’t a monolith and some countries are weird about cards. Here’s two examples.

In Germany, cash is strongly preferred or was the last time I was there a few years ago.

In Norway, cash is nigh nonexistent.

Don’t mistake Germany as representative of the median European country when it comes to card transactions.

Trite comment. Debit/credit cards never took off in Germany because everyone had a Giro card that worked perfectly well for cashless payments. And for online payments, PayPal filled the gap quick enough. The average German saw no reason to request a Visa/MasterCard from their bank for a heavy fee when PayPal did the job. That's also the difference: Germany never had the "Here, have a free credit card" culture.

A Giro card is a debit card.

With a more benevolent reading of my comment you could have seen that I do consider them equivalent for cashless local payments. My first sentence was meant as "[American] debit/credit cards". This doesn't invalidate anything I said.

Within Spain it has virtually dropped to zero among my friends since transfering money is trivial now:

- Bizum for national transfers, you just need someone's number (which you usually have through WhatsApp) representing 90% of instant payments

- SEPA payments also make bank transfers free and trivial for your European friends

The euro payment scenario has changed drastically in the last few years and it's a good thing for customers: yesterday I was able to pay a US company with Bizum through Stripe.

A tongue in cheek comment from me is that in Spain we have all this beautiful infrastructure but no money to send. I would rather have money to send via a slightly more inconvenient infrastructure.

Europe has Wero and India has UPI. Right now it is still good but it will get increasingly harder for private companies like Stripe and Paypal to operate as this becomes more embedded as a critical public service provided by governments.

Certainly, if your definition of Europe is Belgium, France and Germany.

> Wero is a product of EPI Company SE > Available in Belgium, France and Germany.

Greetings from the rest of Europe.

You are right, however they are backed by the european payment initiative and the idea is that it becomes an eu wide standard. Whether they will succeed and how fast, we shall see.

I'm not happy this is not an ECB project, but commercial banks are behind. I'm sceptical if this will stay free, and on how our transaction data is used.

It's basically the better version of iDeal, used heavily in Netherlands. They're slowly changing the iDeal name to Wero. Apparently it's mostly that, change of name coupled with a bigger scope.

No. Card payments offer fraud protection for customers, so they will still be there for online shopping.

Paypal is huge in Germany, it’s pretty much the standard online payment method.

No-one likes them, but they're pretty hard to replace if only due to network effects.

From my personal experience PayPal is actually liked in Germany, people want PayPal for payment because they don’t want to give their bank details or don’t have a credit card. I’ve only ever seen people complain about the company online

> because they don’t want to give their bank details

What's the problem with sharing your bank details? I don't consider those a secret at all. And if they were, chances are they've been compromised somewhere anyway.

The banking system in some countries (including the US) does regard that information as secret. This is, of course, fully insane and the only reason it persists is that the regulatory institutions in those countries are too intransigent to switch from their >100 year old technology to some merely 50 year old technology like public key cryptography.

Or even backward-compatible changes like requiring banks to give customers virtual account numbers that they can give to different merchants/people and turn on and off.

That's fine, but if I give you my IBAN and name on the account, you can only send money to me...

Well and commit actual fraud/identity they by forging my signature maybe... But we don't see that happen on a large scale because it just isn't feasible/worth it. We would see it otherwise as I'm sure there are plenty of datasets with those pieces of info to be bought..

It’s not considered a secret, it’s just something people don’t feel comfortable entering in forms online. That feels a bit too personal, and is simple to enter wrong. A middleman makes that process a non issue. It’s also nice to be able to change banks or have multiple accounts without having to care about online payments details, you just pick in the middleman setting the one you want to use. For example I had an account frozen for an incorrect inkasso (that was eventually retracted), I was glad I could just ask a friend to send me something to PayPal as a way to do online payments.

The abstraction of the middleman makes sense to me for some types of payments, I find bank accounts a bit too low level sometimes.

> It’s not considered a secret, it’s just something people don’t feel comfortable entering in forms online.

If you have someone's US bank routing information then you can forge checks against their account. This is an unforced error downstream of still using a system devised in the early years of the 20th century.

> That feels a bit too personal, and is simple to enter wrong.

It feels personal because they're trying to pretend it isn't a secret even though it structurally is one.

Entering it wrong seems like a fake problem. You copy and paste it from your bank's website.

> It’s also nice to be able to change banks or have multiple accounts without having to care about online payments details

A reasonable payments system does the same thing without a middle man taking a vig. For example, Zelle uses email addresses or phone numbers. If you change banks then you register your email address or phone number with the new bank and from then the money goes there instead. There is no reason a system couldn't work the same way for recurring payments.

> For example I had an account frozen for an incorrect inkasso (that was eventually retracted), I was glad I could just ask a friend to send me something to PayPal as a way to do online payments.

This is just a desire for it to be easy to open a new account at a different bank and start using that.

Nobody needs these middle men and the only reason they exist is that the incumbents and regulatory apparatus make the default system unnecessarily difficult.

Unless you set up something like a brick-and-mortar Trustpilot competitor, you are likely to only ever read online about user feedback on anything. But this does not say a lot about the quality of the feedback.

I am always surprised that people use PayPal for privacy reasons. The company shares a lot more of your information with third parties than a SEPA transfer or card payment would.

Käuferschutz! Safety for the buyer is amazing. I love PayPal, some incident and I have my money in no time back. No endless back and forth with stupid bank clerk. PayPal costs money, I would ditch it for a discount sized as Paypal fee though.

I still remember the old days where Paypal was the only reasonable option to send money internationally

Paypal? Never heard of such. Western Union seems to be the most reasonable especially for third "world countries" where some people don't have a bank account. Even with their fees

lol only Peter & Elon do

....i'm referring to the university, the one that's oddly swallowing up other ones

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