This is an Austrian company that offers mobile payments with barcode/qr-code in shops in Austria and Germany, as well as in a few places in Italy and Luxembourg.
I use it since one year. It works fine, but it could definitely use more attention, so that more shops start to accept it. What are your thoughts on that?
The problem in Europe is exactly the fragmentation of payment systems. For most you can only use them if you are a resident and have a bank account on that country.
On one hand, I want the convenience of a unified system. On the other hand, I don’t want another monopoly with a dangerously wealthy CEO at the helm.
Maybe a payment system that would only be responsible for EU transfers would be the solution? In addition to the established solutions.
I don’t have a great understanding of economics and business, but I think what we need ultimately is to start cooperatives that compete with the megacorps. It seems to distribute wealth more fairly, instead of weaponising wealth.
@professionalspooner funny I have never heard of wero in Germany 😅
I don’t think Wero is comparable to the others, they didn’t have the scope, ambition and backing Wero and the European Payments Initiative have ? It’s limited right now but it just launched, I’m sure more banks will progressively join.
TWINT offers a Prepaid Option for foreigners, and WERO is open to all banks that want to participate.
Exactly. Even the most inclusive are hard to use when compared with using the Visa/Mastercard networks which are integrated with most banks and merchants.
In Germany you have a better acceptance with Girocard (and guess that’s true for most other national systems up there too), and all the popular national systems within the European Payments Initiative will probably convert into Wero (At least that seems to be the plan).
So they will start with a big initial acceptance and cards in circulation. Usually they are cobadged with MC/Visa, so customers won’t probably even won’t notice that they will paying with Wero in Europe
How about with your phone, will that be Wero?
Yes, that will also come with QR Codes when they roll out the payment phase. Right now it’s just instant free money transfers between users via phone number
I think iDEAL and Bancontact are already/will be soon phased out/incorporated into Wero. Source (towards the bottom): https://wero-wallet.eu/news/epi-launches-wero-its-innovative-digital-payment-wallet-in-belgium
MobilePay (Denmark and Finland) and Vipps (Norway) is the same company now, and can be used between each country. Works great when I have friends visiting from Norway in Denmark.
https://feddit.org/post/8902838