[pimeys]

In EU we have multiple national systems, but now they are trying to unify them to the IBAN system, so you can pay in the same way by opening your bank app and scanning a QR code:

https://wero-wallet.eu/

My bank (N26) should support this later this year. I hope it becomes as big and successful as Pix.

[laurencerowe]

Wero sounds similar to the US Zelle system but the big reason for that to exist in the first place is that bank account numbers are not safe to share in the US since they can be used to pull payments so there was never an option for easily transferring money to friends and family other than writing a cheque.

In the UK and Europe I could just share my bank account number or IBAN and make payments through online banking since the late 1990s (though in the UK they only became instant in 2008.) So Wero sounds like a nice convenience but much less of a game changer.

It will be interesting to see if it manages to expand to goods and services since the EU strictly regulates the fees Visa and Mastercard can charge there so there is less incentive to switch than in some other countries.

[Nathanba]

Sharing banking information is not safe in Europe, decades ago a phone scammer convinced me to give them my information and they were able to pull money from my account without any permission from me whatsoever, they just acted like I already signed up to their scam service when I never did. That was a completely foreign and insane idea to me (and it is still insane and should not be allowed) that someone can simply withdraw money from my account. They sent me some contract in the mail that I had to apparently reject and otherwise it was automatically approved. Which itself is surely also not legal but the point is that they were able to take money from my account just with my information.

[imtringued]

The way SEPA direct debit mandates work is absolutely mind boggling.

You'd expect it to work like Paypal, where you have to sign in to your account to authorize the direct debit mandate and also have the option to revoke it there.

No, the way it works is that you have to print out a form, fill it out and send it to the payee who you are granting the direct debit mandate, e.g. your landlord. Your landlord then sends a copy of the direct debit mandate to your bank and the bank authorizes direct debit payments immediately without asking you.

If you want to revoke the direct debit mandate, you have to send a form to your landlord that you want to revoke the direct debit mandate.

This is mindbogglingly stupid, since the payee has no obligation to process your revocation immediately and can take their sweet time.

Canceling a direct debit mandate has no impact on your obligation to pay rent. It makes no sense that you have to inform the payee and let them gatekeep the revocation. It also makes it possible for unscrupulous people to request a direct debit mandate without your knowledge.

[kjetijor]

"decades ago"

Granted, I'm mostly familiar with the Scandinavian bit of Europe, but you can't do jack shit with banking without 2FA which is tied into the national population register.

They decided in the 80ies or 90ies that "relying on knowing secret fixed magic numbers" was not ideal for authenticating people, and sat down and worked out solutions to that problem.

[pimeys]

There's still the SEPA direct debit payments in Germany, so you basically give your bank details and the company takes the money out of your account once a month. These don't exist in Scandinavia, but are very much still the norm in Germany.

[laurencerowe]

In the UK direct debits don't require 2FA (but do require approved forms either online or on paper) but you can also very easily get a refund for any direct debit taken from your account so I assume it's simply not worth the scammers' time.

[foldr]

It's probably somewhat worth it because some people will never notice the debit.

[pimeys]

I think the biggest reason is sovereignty: we cannot risk US cutting our payment system if they for example don't give Greenland for them.

I think this is the biggest reason to ensure you can pay with a local system in shops and restaurants.

[laurencerowe]

That's a very reasonable concern, though given how central Visa and Mastercard are I suspect it is probably necessary to regulate their structures within the EU so that intra-EU payments are not reliant on non-sovereign infrastructure.

[markvdb]

Regulating US companies operating in the EU still leaves a kill switch in untrusted hands. It doesn't solve issues like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Guillou problem.

[tardedmeme]

To be pedantic, IBAN isn't a payment system, but only an identifier. It's like an IP address - you still need to enlist the services of an ISP to reach it, and that ISP has to find an actual route and send packets over actual cables.

[raron]

Wero is just another private company trying get their cut of payment fees. You can do the same thing with SEPA Instant Payment (or some member states outside of the Eurozone have their own similar thing).

I don't see why Wero should exists, their business model seems like "trying to get money for the same service you can get for free".

[jeroenhd]

Wero does several things. You can already send instant payments if you fill out IBAN and such, but entering order numbers, account references, and other such cruft for purchasing products is a pain. Companies receiving such payments also need to connect payment to a user and update their digital processes somehow. Wero offers such a solution so you don't have to find a PSD2 processor (which will probably cost just as much).

For interpersonal transactions I don't really see the advantage here, but for commercial use cases it's got a solid product and purpose.

Wero doesn't stand to benefit much from payment fees as European payment fees are already rather slim compared to, for instance, American ones (crazy things like percentages of purchase price with a minimum amount!).

[childintime]

So how can a QR code not supply the necessary data? Example:

   payment://iban=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX&amount=12.34EUR

Any bank app should be able to read this. What is so complicated? Right, nothing. Credit card companies are a hidden tax, worse, they are a tax on turnover, not profits.

[raron]

It can, in fact there is even an open standard for that:

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

By the way credit card companies do a lot more than Wero, SEPA or any other similar instant payment solution (e.g. chargeback).

[pimeys]

But in EU you don't usually get credit... The cards are often debit only. Yes, credit cards do exist but they are not like the american cards, and things like chargebacks are not super simple. I for example haven't had a credit card over a decade now...

[raron]

Chargebacks exists for (EU style) debit cards, too. It doesn't need to be simple just available, so if the merchant disappears with your money or someone uses your stolen card, there is a way you can get your money back. With bank transfers that's not possible (at least here).

[rkachowski]

wero is a european initiative set up by a consortium of banks that is built layered upon instant payments. it's not a private company like paypal or visa, its an attempt at making European payment infrastructure

[throwaway473825]

Sweden has a similar "initiative" set up by a consortium of banks (Swish), as do many other European countries.

Usually these systems raise their fees after being established, sometimes even higher than Visa/Mastercard.

Brazil's Pix is something else. It wasn't created by private entities to make money.

[jeroenhd]

Wero's Dutch predecessor, iDEAL, has been an established part of online payments for 20 years now.

As barely anyone has a credit card and very people want to deal with the faff of manually entering billing codes or account numbers, iDEAL usage is near universal for online payments. I don't recall fees ever going up as an end customer.

[throwaway473825]

Card fees aren't paid by end customers either. The Swedish iDEAL equivalent, Swish, is more expensive than cards for smaller transactions (below 15 euros). Wero will be like Swish, not Pix.

[jeroenhd]

Wero is not something that "will be", Wero already is. It used to be called something else for decades, but that doesn't change much.

[Pooge]

I couldn't have said it better. I don't understand what they solve.

We need instant, free SEPA transfers around the clock. Switzerland is not part of SEPA but IBAN is used so it is trivial to send payments to foreign accounts that have an IBAN.

I always say that the day Trump decides to block Visa/MasterCard outside the US is the day we get instant payments and finally get rid of cards.

[pimeys]

In Germany we have free instant SEPA transfers. What Wero solves is that you can send money without giving your IBAN number, which at least in Germany can be used to take money from your account.

So you get standardized payment system where you scan a QR code or NFC tag with your bank app and the payment goes through IBAN and the system shows an approval of payment.

It still uses the same systems under the surface.

[Pooge]

> your IBAN number, which at least in Germany can be used to take money from your account

What the f#*k?!

[pimeys]

It's called SEPA direct debit. For some reason people don't want to use their web bank to pay for things, so what you usually do is you do a SEPA direct debit contract and the company takes the money from your account every month.

[ptman]

SEPA instant already exists. I think it guarantees sub-10s transactions. Unfortunately it is not the default.

[Pooge]

SEPA is only for Euros but there are countries that don't use Euros that still use IBAN (e.g. Switzerland and UK).

[hocuspocus]

The UK has had instant transfers for many years.

Switzerland since last summer, but banks aren't forced to expose the feature to retail customers yet, at least not for free. We could have had that 15 years ago if our government wasn't so afraid of upsetting the banking lobbies.

[hocuspocus]

> We need instant, free SEPA transfers around the clock.

We have? SCT inst has been rolled out almost everywhere

> Switzerland is not part of SEPA

We definitely are. Transfers in EUR from/to CH IBANs use SEPA rails. CHF accounts can also send or receive EUR transparently (usually at a bad FX rate, but it just works).

> I don't understand what they solve. [...]

> I always say that the day Trump decides to block Visa/MasterCard outside the US is the day we get instant payments and finally get rid of cards.

You answered your own question. We need pan-European payments systems on top of the existing banking infrastructure. Payments and transfers aren't the same thing. By moving to mobile wallets with QR code and NFC payments, this opens up interoperability beyond Europe too.

[Pooge]

> We have? SCT inst has been rolled out almost everywhere

That is true; I should have said "EEA" or "countries supporting IBAN".

> We definitely are. Transfers in EUR from/to CH IBANs use SEPA rails. CHF accounts can also send or receive EUR transparently (usually at a bad FX rate, but it just works).

Yes, which is exactly my point. We need it to work for CHF as well. Instant payments are not the norm and in fact UBS is charging for it.

> You answered your own question. We need pan-European payments systems on top of the existing banking infrastructure. Payments and transfers aren't the same thing. By moving to mobile wallets with QR code and NFC payments, this opens up interoperability beyond Europe too.

A payment should be a bank transfer. Anything more complicated is just something that is to be exploited by middle-men.

[hocuspocus]

This is a false dichotomy. You can have very cheap transaction fees, Pix is state-run and probably operates at a loss, with merchant fees as low as 0.2~0.3%. In comparison the cheapest card payment under the EEA interchange cap is probably slightly above 0.5% when you add scheme fees and PSP costs.

However businesses do require payment systems and not just barebones bank transfers. Except for high trust, low volume transactions such as buying a car, paying your rent...

[raron]

> A payment should be a bank transfer. Anything more complicated is just something that is to be exploited by middle-men.

I disagree with that. Payments (especially online and contactless ones) should have some form of buyer protection, chargeback and a way to handle fraudulent transaction, lost / stolen cards, etc.

[Pooge]

> buyer protection, chargeback and a way to handle fraudulent transaction

There is; it's called a bank.