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Comment by M95D | Hacker News Reader

It's all based on phone apps, replacing Visa/Mastercard dependency with Apple and Google dependency. Far worse for privacy IMO.

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Not sure it could be worse for privacy but even it was it would still stop Visa and Mastercard from refusing to carry payments.

That's exactly what they did to high profile European judges. You can't pull that stunt and expect to get away with it long term.

https://www.euronews.com/2026/02/18/us-sanctions-turn-intern...

No it's not. Here in Italy your debit card allows you to pay by bancomat or Visa.

Apple and Google are bound to Visa/Mastercard's rules. There is basically no EC without the V/M, and Apple and Google won't be happy just selling hardware. How are you paying for your apps and services ?

Looking at it from the privacy lens doesn't help when it's a matter of directly controlling the money flow.

is Wero based on apps? iDeal only involves the banking app for me, the iDeal part is just a website

Nevertheless, that app could be one day running with F-Droid and such... or that's what I dream. The infrastructure is only one piece of the huge dependency puzzle.

With GDPR I think it sill will be much much better that what VISA/Mastercard keeps on your activities.

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

Well... no so much in practice. My bank automatically enrolled my personal phone number into the system. I asked them to remove it 2 months ago. One month ago I received a reply that they're working on it. I may be the only person in this country that asked for this - they're now probably thinking which is cheaper: to pay the GDPR fine, repeatedly, or patch their banking software and re-certify it, or maybe refuse to have me as their client.

Anyway, I don't know if you actually read GDPR, but the government (& various agencies) and the bank are both exempted from GDPR. They will all know everything I bought through this system, from where and at what price.

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