this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
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Europe

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Europe Is Breaking Up With Visa and Mastercard β€” and It’s a $24 Trillion Problem (europeanbusinessmagazine.com)
submitted 1 day ago by roserose56@lemmy.zip to c/europe@feddit.org
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[–] jnod4@lemmy.ca 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Where? On what platform? How can one install and use such a thing?

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

I'm gonna disappoint you now.

  • Only some EU countries have joined so far, and I believe not all banks for those either. Here's a list
  • You can use either your bank app or the Wero app, available on Play Store or App Store. No Wero without a Google/Apple approved phone and app, unless there's a bank that provides an APK file and doesn't rely on Play Services
  • You can't use it to pay in person yet, it's more of a PayPal replacement than a Visa/MasterCard replacement
  • If/when the point of sale payments become a thing, it will be via a QR. No plastic card you can use when your phone battery is flat. I have no idea if they're planning on changing that.

Personally I can't use it, it's not available in my country. I can however send people money instantly by doing a SEPA Instant transfer, the only "difficult" part about is needing their IBAN, which they can just copy and paste into a messenger app or send via a text if it's a stranger (like the one or two times I've bought a car off a stranger via bank transfer - which mostly there's no need to here as the Estonian transport authority actually has a secure method for that which guarantees that the car's ownership is transferred when the money is transferred - and works via a bank link)

There's been talk of an European payment card system too, but usually people just go "well the individual countries already have their systems so there's no need, Wero is all you need". Which I disagree with, because 1) many EU countries do NOT have a payment card system 2) those systems require you to use your card in your own country mostly. If there was a big EU-wide system, it would more than likely also be accepted in non-EU countries in the future and we could have European cards with the Visa/MasterCard experience where you just go to pretty much any country in the world and your card JUST WORKS. Till that happens, you still need to own a Visa or Mastercard if you want to go abroad, though luckily you can just have a virtual card for that nowadays.

TL;DR: It currently has like two use cases which are already mostly handled well enough by normal bank transfers, which are instant up to like 10k EUR IIRC (might've been more, might've been less) and available much more widely. Though if wero offers consumer protections, it MAY be a bit better in online purchases than a normal transfer - but as long as you only buy from reputable sites, that's not too big of an issue anyway, and there's three and a half online stores that let you buy using wero apparently (this is just what I've heard, can't confirm - it's not available in my country after all)