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by peter_stokes 1 day ago
> It's not part of the specs or requirements to only be available in the Google / Apple ecosystem.

but at the moment, it is. so he's right to be nervous. from one american duopoly to another.

but i share your optimism that they eventually allow this to work without them.
1 comments
dewey 1 day ago
The commenter is stating that as a fact, which is spreading information that's not true to others reading that.

Perfect is the enemy of good as always. Having a system that is currently available on the two biggest mobile platforms for the launch (Covering probably 99.9% of consumers) is already much better than piping every single transaction through two US mega corps.

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haagch 1 day ago
Replies from the German GLS bank on mastodon imply that EPI does not support the use case where banks add it to their web interface

https://ruhr.social/@glsbank/116215341782832097 https://ruhr.social/@glsbank/116125936995037426

> Good morning, it's not "our" fault. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about it—Wero is a service offered by EPI, and they've decided to take a "mobile-first" approach for now. Warm regards from Bochum!

As for the prospects of ever seeing banking apps outside of android/ios, there is only https://www.das-parlament.de/wirtschaft/finanzen/wir-bauen-m...

> What about smartphones that run on free and open-source software instead of the commercial operating systems used by the iPhone or Google? > Tanja Müller-Ziegler: This market is still very much a niche one. There are still too few providers, which is why it’s hardly worth offering banking apps for these devices.

> Perfect is the enemy of good as always.

I'm no expert on iDEAL, but being 20 years old, it's older than Android and iOS and presumably supported web based payments from the very beginning. I really don't understand why nowadays people seem to think that app exclusivity is somehow a natural starting point. It's a relatively recent invention.

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dewey 1 day ago
> they've decided to take a "mobile-first" approach for now

That's hardly a confirmation that it will never be possible ("for now"). It seems like a fair tradeoff for a launch when almost everyone has a smartphone and that's already enforced like that for many parts of life (I'm not saying it's great, but it's a valid tradeoff when alternative options exist) like banking or public transport where the happy path often is a phone app.

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haagch 1 day ago
You'd think that basic infrastructure such as payment systems had higher standards than just "most" people having access to it.

It's fine as long as we have alternatives, but if online shops were to start to phase out SEPA payments in favor of Wero and Wero-only shops were to start popping it, it would be a real problem.

Btw the solution already exists: It's still relatively small scale but GNU Taler is live in Switzerland. The EU could make regulation to make it easier to adopt at any time it wants.

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dewey 1 day ago
It's a system which is currently barely live in 5 countries out of 27 EU countries. In most of them < 2 banks are supporting it. It's basically a beta rollout and there's no danger of SEPA, MasterCard or VISA going away and leaving people stranded that don't have a smartphone so there's no need to panic.

Give it some time to mature before writing it off.

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