I get that this is a good thing and long overdue - but the excitement here just underscores for me how expectations in Europe for Europe doing anything truly cutting edge are low.
I think EU citizens are excited mainly because of winning back their digital sovereignty, nobody said this would be cutting edge technology. Actually the simplicity of the solution is key (Wero is based on EU’s proven SEPA Instant Payment rails).
That being said, what I do not like about Wero is that some parts of the infrastructure is based on AWS and or Google cloud; hopefully they will switch to European clouds, soon.
I wouldn't count on that, in-order to provide rock solid financial service, you definitely need a reliable cloud provider. There is no true equivalent in EU for a cloud provider like that at the moment
This sovereignty debate is the dumbest thing I’ve heard, like a country can be sovereign, but Europe is not a country. It’s like saying Asia is going to be so sovereign. We all saw how the unity of Europe with brexit.
> To live up to its claim of being a sovereign payment service, Wero intends to reduce its dependence on non-European cloud providers in the future.
They haven't even started any migration, rather future topic without any deadline.
Also the article states that
> When EPI first launched Wero, only cloud services from international providers could deliver the performance, security and stability needed to deliver a competitive solution
and that's is still true to this day, like what EU cloud provider is on the same level as AWS?
Yes, and I read till the end. The article quotes a presse statement in which they say:
„EPI is currently working to reduce its dependency on non-European suppliers. The market has evolved significantly in recent years, and we are now building on this progress to drive this transition forward.“
The precursor to this system (iDEAL) has been running in The Netherlands for 21 years. Pretty much all transactions of Dutch webshops and even a lot of foreign webshops (thanks to Stripe support) by Dutch buyers go through iDEAL, as well as most digital P2P payments in Europe.
Many other EU countries have had similar systems for years, but Wero is standardizing it between a bunch of countries.
That being said, what I do not like about Wero is that some parts of the infrastructure is based on AWS and or Google cloud; hopefully they will switch to European clouds, soon.