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Wero is such a valuable asset for Europe and couldn't have come at a better time.
It's built on the excellent SEPA system, which standardized bank transfers and "Lastschrift" in Europe. SEPA itself got a huge upgrade last year with mandatory instant transfers that cannot cost more than standard transfers between European checking accounts.
Both of those allowed Wero to happen as a final abstract top layer, meaning: the UX of sending money to an email address with the security and convenience of bank transfers. And everything is built collaboratively on top of European banking infrastructure.
No account necessary and no private american conglomerates can delete that account.
And before some says: "Well, now the government controls everything!": They already did, since... Ever. Now its one less entity with that access and one that can be (hopefully) controlled and changed by a majority.
Note that Wero is amongs others based on the Dutch iDEAL [1] system, which was introduced 21 years ago. Virtually every Dutch web shop supports iDEAL (and many only support iDEAL) as well as international payment services such as PayPal and Stripe. As a result, the vast majority of transactions of Dutch webshops go through iDEAL. It is really a super-nice frictionless system.
iDEAL also supports P2P payments through Tikkie (ABN AMRO) or the payment request option of other banks. You basically show a QR code or send a link and the person paying goes through the iDEAL flow to transfer the money. Tikkie (and the other bank's similar and compatible systems) have been one of the primary methods for P2P transfers for many years now.
I am really happy that we are getting the same system across multiple countries now. Contactless payments through Wero are also planned, so that we can finally become independent of Google/Apple Pay for contactless payments using a phone.
[1] EPI purchased the Dutch iDEAL and Belgian Payconiq and mentioned on multiple occasions that Wero is based on the foundations of iDEAL. They kept iDEAL running as a separate system in order not to disturb it during the upbringing of Wero, but iDeal is going to migrated to Wero the coming period.
> No account necessary and no private american conglomerates can delete that account.
Officially you need a Google or Apple account to download a wero capable app from their stores, and Google and Apple can always delete all wero capable apps from their stores like for example with Russian sanctioned banks.
Some banking apps work on non - google play controlled android smartphones, but always only accidentally. Some banks like for example Consorbank already crack down on "sideloading" their app at all: https://www.reddit.com/r/Consorsbank/comments/1p909w1/commen...
My bank (BOFIIE2D) now gives me the option of instant or standard payments. Both cost the same. And in both cases the money leaves my account instantly. I can just choose whether it arrives at the recipient instantly or after a few days. I have no idea why standard is still an option. Why would I want that?
> the UX of sending money to an email address
> No account necessary and no private american conglomerates can delete that account.
Who owns domain names (which emails require)? No, don't say people do, people don't own domain names, they lease them, and it's not a right either.
> instant transfers that cannot cost more than standard transfers
Interesting, I didn't know that. Now, why would anyone want to do a non-instant transfer, then (short of not knowing about it like in my case)? Doesn't this mandate basically make all transfers instant?
So i'm not a fan of banking / money in general, but i'm surprised to such a rose-tainted comment upvoted so high.
The real european alternative is the research project Taler https://taler.net , wero looks like another attempt at big tech to capture the market and force you into android/iphone hell.
I frequently run into failed SEPA transfers. At least three per month out of ~200. So it could use some more stability for my use case.
In all fairness, I also have a couple of VISA payments that fail every month.
"valuable asset for Europe", and it's available in 5 countries. Yay.
We already have a bunch of local non-interoperable systems, so what's one more?
But now every bank needs to support and implement it separately. My bank doesn't so far which is annoying.
> The Wero app can be installed on any mobile device or tablet running iOS 17.4 or later, or Android 9 or later. We recommend updating your device to the latest version of its operating system for maximum performance and security.
> It is not possible to send Wero payments to friends & family via a web browser or on a computer
Truly independent from US companies ... If you don't have an iOS or an Android device, you are just stuck, once again
> > It is not possible to send Wero payments to friends & family via a web browser or on a computer
Wow, that's a deal breaker for me. I don't need yet another service that's only accessible to a dumbed down device. Here I was hoping that it'd become available in my country as well...
One step at a time. Until then, you can use Murena or GrapheneOS.
the barrier to spinning up an alternative European Android operating system given that it's open source is not that high, see China, and my money would be on that happening within the next few years.
That second quote is truly a sentence of all time. It is not possible to use this [computer payment system] on a computer...
I recently bought something from fahrrad.de and was surprised to see Wero as an payment option. I don't know what I expected, but scanning the QR code and acknowledging the payment in my banking app worked without any issues.
The whole process had a very "snappy" feeling without waiting for any of the usual spinners and redirects. So... thumbs up, I guess?
Decathlon is pretty neat and technologically advanced actually, so not surprising news for them to adopt Wero.
In eastern European stores they use RFID for every product, so you just throw stuff in a bin without scanning and can self check faster than usual self scan.
Well I have not tried throwing in a bike in a bin or a dumbbell, but I presume it works for 99% of stuff.
Curious what they pay for RFID, last I checked it is about 5-6 cents per item for small quantities.
I need to use this thread to mention the Polish payment system Blik. It is one of the most convenient payment systems out there - you generate an ephemeral 6-digit code in your banking app, copy it to the vendor, confirm, done. Works P2P with phone numbers, too.
Interestingly, it would be the perfect system for payments using AI agents - the agent tries to pay, asks user to provide 6-digit code, submits payment request. User confirms via banking app. Done.
This type of thing (scan QR code) is how basically all payments were done when I was recently in China, via wechat or alipay (either you show your QR code for big shops, or scan their QR code for small shops / vendors. They can just print them out if they want and hang a copy).
I found it superior to other systems I've used in basically every way. Particularly for small market stalls -- I scan their QR code, I enter how much I want to send them. They never get my details, I don't have to trust they didn't fat-finger the price. It also makes it amazingly easy to send money to friends, just scan their code and send them their share of dinner.
Wero shows that marketing is everything. It's just regular bank transactions with a much larger fee. We could have had EPC QR codes and similar completely free technologies instead.
Related:
Lidl Introduces the European Payment Method Wero in Germany
Wow, very cool "The European way to pay online." - so surely they are on f-droid or have an apk download like Signal with build signatures published on their website! Oh, no - they require you to have a Google account and Play Store on your mobile device. Well, false advertising again. Disappointing, but why am I not surprised. Thank you, but no.
God I wish the US had a digital payment system that we could all basically agree on. Having Apple Pay vs Google Pay vs Zelle vs Paypal vs Venmo vs all the others is annoying as hell.
Why is this news? In the Netherlands the ideal system is already replaced by Wero ? What am I missing.
iDeal is amazing and it's great it's coming to the rest of Europe, even if they gave it a worse name.
Here in the Benelux it's the go-to payment option for ecommerce.
I think this will be a much bigger threat to Visa and Mastercard than the oft-promised digital Euro.
> competition in digital payments
What competition? Here in the Netherlands, iDeal (which is already renamed to Wero) has almost no competition. Perhaps PayPal a few percent
I always use Paypal because they have buyers protection, and this has already saved me countless of times.
Would like to see if this is also offered in the Wero ecosystem?
If European retailers manage to link Wero payments to loyalty schemes, then everyone will benefit and this could eventually become something. Still, no thread to legacy credit card rails (Mastercard, Visa) for many years. The industry doesn’t expect hockey stick growth AFAIK
The article headline screams Claude to me, is that just me? I am as bullish as can be on AI usage, but I’m either hallucinating myself or this is the classic AI “not this, but that” phrase that I keep reading all day.
> Decathlon didn’t just add a new payment button to its German checkout page. It handed European banks their first big-box sporting goods test case at a moment when competition in digital payments is intensifying and the push for EU-made payment infrastructure is growing.
this is good as a short term solution but it should really be a new system without commercial banks or any other for profit entity.
if you give up sepa compatibility you can have things like payments to alias with real name invisible to other party, offline qr codes, randomized per vendor account ids that cant be used to identify you. could even make account data end to end encrypted making it so police cant read it directly and need to show you a court order (but then you get problems with key recovery).
the ultimate play is replacing accounts in privately owned banks with one public system for money storage and transfers. you would only need a bank to borrow or invest and if its bankrupt you cant lose the rest of your money. of course this is equivalent to a cbdc so we would need to legally protect cash and crypto (including privacy coins) to prevent abuse from governments.
Credit card companies and services like PayPal extract large amount of wealth, mostly to provide a service (instant payment) for which they are no longer technically necessary.
New systems like Wero (or similar ones already widely established in India or Brazil) are based on instant bank transfers rather than a credit card company that acts as a middle man.
Presse release: https://einblicke.decathlon.de/presse/pressekit/digitale-inn...
>Decathlon switched on Wero on decathlon.de on July 20, making Germany the first market in the French group’s international footprint to carry the European payment scheme.
This is not true, it has been available on the Belgian website (decathlon.be) for months.
I've also recently seen a Wero option somewhere in Germany. Probably was the transport authority in Berlin, or an air company, I can't quite remember. Haven't seen it in France yet, though.
In Spain we can pay using Bizum on many websites, including Amazon.
I'd like the EU to enforce a payment-system agnostic checkout for webshops, which gives me the same payment options everywhere and which also adds a layer of privacy.
It sucks that decathlon basically left Canada after a short trial run. I think it really came down to crappy marketing overall.
After the pandemic, Germany truly picked up cashless payments. But still a long way to go, especially to prevent tax evasion
Cool, more possibilities to pay for that cheap plastic from China they sell.
Isn't Wero just another proprietary app that requires a Google or Apple smartphone? Can I use it from my web browser like I can with PayPal?
Why do you need 3rd party app and middle man to show you QR code for instant SEPA payment?
All Decathlon had to do was show QR code with payment details which you will scan with ANY APP you prefer to use (most likely your bank app you have already or if not like me, you can use other ways).
This doesn't seem like progress at all, quite the opposite, just force all the shops show you QR code for SEPA payment without this 3rd party nonsense and pay with whatever (bank) app you prefer based on payment details in QR code.
This is supported by ANY OS, heck for what's worth you can scan code with QR reader in browser and use online banking in desktop mode to pay with whatever phone you use. Replacing US Visa and Mastercard companies with US Google and Apple companies doesn't seem like any improvement at all to me, it's actually worse since it is easier to get/use bank card than phone for small kids/seniors.
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.
such a slow roll-out, Brazil implementation of Pix was ridiculously faster.
Can we start to accept Wero as a Web marchant ?
Looks like the PSP don't really lower the fees of Wero transactions right now.
Hah, when you can smell the slop right at the first sentence...
Why do Germans corrupt their own language with that weird pig-German?
On the German Wero site[1], the copy not only uses utterly gratuitous and even made up fake English words where there are perfectly adequate German words, e.g., "senden", hero, support, business, etc.; but the worst part is that they mess up or maybe can't even realize anymore that the German word for hero in "Der absolute Hero für dein Geld!" could have produced a far superior phrase through a rhyme, i.e., "Der absolute Held für dein Geld!". It's nonsensical to use "hero". Why would you use "hero"?
What are you doing, Germans? "Senden" is not a word. You just made that up! Or should I say "you just hooberdoobered it" since we are just making up gibberish words? We don't say "senden"... why are you saying "senden"?? It's like a traumatized child making up a gibberish language to live in a fantasy world. It's not healthy.
It's also really rather discriminatory towards older people who may not know this weird hipster pig-german made up gibberish.
For context for Americans or other actual English speakers, imagine if an American spoke like this:
"Come on, Niemcy, use your own słowa. You are worth it. Leave other ludzie's words for them to use. Have some szacunek. It's kind of żałosne actually. Get it together już." It's Polish, btw.
Does that convey the level of cringe? It's weird!
Europeans are anti American nowadays.