Bye bye Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, and many others. They can go and play "America First". We'll have our own independent system by november 2025.
this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2025
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This is really really good news.
This is referring to the plans to create digital euro with GNU Taler, right?
GNU Taler (Taxable Anonymous Libre Electronic Resources) is a new secure electronic payment system based on open standards, free software, and advanced cryptography. GNU Taler provides privacy guarantees to the buyer while offering the possibility to audit merchants, making sale incomes transparent and fraud difficult. To online merchants and retailers, GNU Taler offers instant transaction clearance without risks of fake payment methods. Computations needed to clear the payments are efficient and scalable so that banks can pass on lower transaction costs to consumers and merchants. Consumers can withdraw money from their existing bank account into their GNU Taler wallet, detaching their spending habits from scrutiny, in the way cash does.
The NGI TALER project is funded under Horizon Europe (Pilots for the Next Generation Internet) with the aim of bringing GNU Taler to market across Europe.
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Well collegues, I think we must see it as a positive evolution. We can have some doubts for sure, but there are things moving onto a more independent Europe and we cannot be against that idea. So let's stay positive and we'll see what direction things are going. Keep buying European !!!
My attention will be on the selection of providers, planned for Q2 2025. If non-EU (and I would personally exclude also non-Eurozone, because incentives) providers are allowed in the infrastructure, especially American, Israeli or Chinese, the whole thing is not only a joke, but an extremely risky operation.
Meanwhile my Bank is switching from Maestro (USA) to VISA (USA) for my everyday debit Card, and i must accept the change until September. I guess i have to find a new Bank after so many years.
Why does it matter to you?
Because i don't want to use Visa for my daily expenses. They get a cut from shops.
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By november 2025 they will begin negotiations to write a draft of the proposal.
With the speed of our bureaucracy and the current evolution of the world, we'll be paying with sparkly rocks and seashells before we're getting a digital Euro.
Without digital euro, there is already Wero app to replace PayPal, Visa and MasterCard. At least in theory... It's a payment app that allows to pay and receive money via wire transfer from bank to bank without fee.
In practice, many banks are not enrolled in this program and I have yet to find a single business where I can pay this way. But at least replacing PayPal to send money to friends and family should be easy enough.
What about Klarna? Isn't it Swedish?
It is. However, they are... Well, let's describe them as pretty US like in spirit.
What does this mean? In regard of their (who is "them"?) political affiliations? Simply the fact that they are not US based or owned lets me prefer them over PayPal.
Shitty business behaviour. People got surprised by changes in the 'fine print' of mail order and internet shops. Consumers had trouble with the concept that they now in essence had two contracts. One with the shop and one with Klarna. Even if the shop didn't deliver the goods or delivered wrong or broken goods, Klarna still demanded the purchase prize.
Klarna has a lot of automated processes. A lot of problems derived from that. People were supposed to enter a certain case number when paying - and nothing else. If people messed up by adding other info (like an invoice number/date/seller) or mistyped, Klarna's system wasn't able to handle it. If they couldn't file the payment there was no other system in place to assure a correct booking. Instead consumers received payment reminders and extra reminder fees. Even when consumers showed proof of payment the system often didn't accept it and it went on and on, in a few cases Klarna went to court about it.
The latest is Klarna's idea wanting banking info from consumers - and by all it's literally everything that is mentioned in your banking statements. Klarna wants the consumer to sign a declaration of release to the bank so that Klarna can access everything.
Shitty. That's the word you're looking for
I haven't tried it. Core difference (on paper): Wero is a EU government program, unlike Klarna which is operated by a private company.
Isn't Wero run by a group of EU banks? First time I hear about EU involvement. Afaik it is the counter effort to the digital Euro from these banks.
Edit: I see, the EU Commission is somewhat involved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Initiative but I don't think they are the driving force behind Wero.
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Here in Italy we have Satispay. It is already quite big. I guess there are still some limitations but these are quickly fixed. Direct bank transfers and reduced fees Satispay
There's something similar in Spain called Bizum, created by banking institutions. Most Spanish banks implement it so your phone number is associated to your back account, so you can send and receive money instantly without fees to anyone just by knowing their phone number. Works really well.
The program has expanded to Italy and Portugal too. The UE will end up mandating Europe wide interoperability among the biggest ones, is my guess
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I haven't come across this one. Important difference: Wero is a EU government program, Satispay is operated by a private company.
A private company that is already enshittifying, to be precise. After years of gathering market share by being a zero commissions solution, lately they introduced commissions in some cases higher than what more consolidated payment solutions have.
This is what makes me hopeful with Wero being a government initiative, but it needs a serious push before it starts to become useful.
Do we have any documentation about the origin of the infrastructure providers for Wero?
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Sure. Wero is interesting because it is an official program but I am worried that it may not be so widespread. Here in Italy I never heard of it. Never seen anyone using it. Maybe it is new?
I learned about it recently myself on Lemmy. Many French banks are enrolled, but only 1 German bank. I hope it can develop, but today it's practically useless. It needs a serious push from national governments if they want it to succeed.
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The digital euro won't come before 2028, and even this is not sure as the legislation is not yet approved. Or did I miss something?
(That aside, there are many issues with digital fiat money to be solved yet, including privacy, financial censorship, and other things.)
[Edit typo.]
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