Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment

https://www.lesnumeriques.com/banque-en-ligne/adieu-visa-et-mastercard-130-millions-d-europeens-basculent-vers-un-paiement-100-souverain-des-2026-n250918.html

90•healsdata•42m ago

Comments

JumpCrisscross•19m ago

Banks in Spain, Italy and Portugal are joining what this article describes as France’s Wero system [1]. («L'initiative française Wero».)

Focus this year is on P2P transfers. Commerce is targeted for 2027. Given EuroPA has done a token amount of transactions to date, I’m not sure anyone should hold their breaths.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment)

toomuchtodo•18m ago

Wero – Digital payment wallet, made in Europe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47038965 - February 2026 (132 comments)

Europe's Banks Launch Wero Payments to Dislodge Visa, Mastercard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41666833 - September 2024 (88 comments)

Unofficial Wero Adoption Tracker - https://www.werotracker.eu/

BadBadJellyBean•15m ago

I wish Wero was a real alternative but it seem to be a thin wrapper around Bank APIs and SEPA instant transactions. It has pretty much non of the functionality that PayPal or other services give. It just makes it easier to send money with a phone number instead of an IBAN. My bank doesn't even support it.

rbanffy•13m ago

> My bank doesn't even support it.

It's not like it's that difficult to implement. Most Brazilian banks implemented a similar protocol in months.

KeplerBoy•12m ago

Isn't that much better than PayPal? Why would i want my money to end up in some intermediate PayPal account?

piva00•7m ago

Isn't a wrapper making the ergonomics better valuable enough?

In Sweden we have Swish for domestic transfers, if I could use Swish (or if Wero took it over) the same way to transfer money to my friends living in other EU countries I'd be very, very happy.

What kind of functionality PayPal offers that is much better? Using cards instead of direct debit?

timpera•15m ago

Wero is not French, but it has replaced France's Paylib. It's pretty awesome and seems to quickly have replaced all other apps (Lydia, PayPal) for small payments in my friend and family circles. I'm excited to see it expand to PoS payments.

DalasNoin•11m ago

Can you confirm people in france actually use wero? I had heard of it every so often but basically zero people actually use it, my revolut app has a feature to use wero but never used it. I mean would be great, getting rid of CC fees could literally lower grocery prices by 1-2%.

timpera•8m ago

I can only speak from my experience, but yes, multiple people (a few friends, people at work, and my uncle) have suggested to "make [me] a Wero" lately to pay me back small amounts. The fact that's it's integrated into the existing banking apps helps.

mcv•5m ago

From what I understand, Weru is identical to iDeal, which has been the standard Dutch internet payment system for decades. So I'm a bit surprised to see France claim ownership.

bouk•14m ago

iDeal is an enormous success in the Netherlands so if banks implement it as well in other countries then it will definitely be competitive with credit cards for online payments

timpera•11m ago

iDeal is in the process of being replaced by Wero, which is pretty cool!

spockz•10m ago

Wero is the pan-European successor to ideal. Other countries had something similar. We are now converging on using the same technique and mechanism everywhere. It also takes a bite out of payment providers like adyen because they managed the different payment methods for shops. In the future you only need to use Wero.

mytailorisrich•8m ago

What's the benefit of this over contactless payments?

mcv•3m ago

It works over the internet.

microtonal•6m ago

Ehm. Wero is partially based on the Dutch iDEAL system, which has been hugely successful.

Pretty much all purchases from Dutch webshops are paid through iDEAL as well as many P2P payments. It's also supported by international payment services (iirc Stripe and Shopify).

If they manage to replicate it in other European countries, Werk will be huge. Moreover, it's supported by many banks.

gsky•19m ago

I'm pretty sure American gov won't react kindly

WJW•16m ago

America: You need to be more self sufficient and not lean on us so much!

Europe: <launches European payment initiative>

America: NOT LIKE THAT!!!

rbanffy•15m ago

I'm pretty sure European governments know that and are prepared to deal with the temper tantrum.

toomuchtodo•14m ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43284950 - March 2025

> “How can I decouple from the US as fast as possible?” is what this leads to.

> Diplomacy is the art of saying “good dog” until you make it to the rock. The US will apply pressure for short term gain against allies while they move away long term.

simonask•8m ago

Who cares at this point. Nothing has ever managed to unite Europeans as effectively as the orange man’s unrelenting torrent of temper tantrums over the past year and a half.

Americans, we know some of you aren’t crazy. Can’t wait for the grown-ups to be in charge again, but in the mean time we’ll be moving on.

criddell•3m ago

[delayed]

reddalo•17m ago

Too bad that, for Italy, BancomatPay joined instead of Satispay, an app that's actually used (especially in the North). Almost nobody uses BancomatPay.

epolanski•9m ago

Satispay is no longer really used anymore.

It was only welcomed by merchants in the 0-fee era, now no merchant cares anymore as Satispay is no longer free of charge and pulled the rug.

And to send payments across friends there's instant bank wires (often free of charge), and even when it's not instant it is executed in few hours-one working day max which isn't a big issue when you're transferring money across friends.

reddalo•3m ago

> And to send payments across friends there's instant bank wires

That's nice (when it's free), but banking apps are clunky, unfriendly, heavy and slow. Unicredit and Intesa, two main Italian banks, both have apps that are atrocious to use and riddled with annoyances.

People want an easy and quick way to send/receive money (Satispay does that almost well).

And for some banks Wero seems like it's going to be available through your existing bank app. Which is a no-go for me.

nwatson•15m ago

Equivalent PIX is very popular in Brazil for instant payments.

petcat•15m ago

> A Frenchman using Wero will be able to transfer money to a Spanish friend on Bizum, with the same simplicity as a domestic payment.

Have you seen the new money app? It's on Tubu. It's on Weeno. I'm on Dippy but my friend is on Poob. Poob has it for you.

btown•11m ago

For the uninitiated: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/poob-has-it-for-you

iamtheworstdev•8m ago

also relevant is the end of this SNL sketch from this last weekend - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS97AzfKp3U

fontain•11m ago

I’m 50. All startup news looks like this:

“Payments via Zoosha? K-smog and Batboy launch new startup.”

echelon•6m ago

It's better than that trend of taking English words and removing the final vowels before "r" or some other consonant.

nemomarx•3m ago

I'm not actually sure Wubi and Tubu are better than something like Cashr tbh

atonse•9m ago

LOL thank you domain squatters. I can't think of any other reason why startups often always have the most ridiculous names.

fontain•5m ago

Every single 3 and 4 letter .com domain has been registered for at least 20 years, not a single one is available to register. Domains aren’t the reason for names like “wiro” and “tubi”.

p2detar•9m ago

[delayed]

kome•9m ago

ahahah!

so true. those names are silly. also, French and Spanish can already send money for free via IBAN / SEPA

p2detar•6m ago

[delayed]

HelloUsername•14m ago

Source was posted back in February: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46861789

wink•13m ago

Totally misleading. Without reading all of it: MAYBE it means: it is/will be enabled for 130m people.

And even those of us who have activated it, have hardly used it for the most part, or hve concerns.

bsimpson•8m ago

It was weird to see them bragging about €6MM volume in the first year.

spockz•12m ago

Pretty much was already available via SEPA. We had a similar system in the Netherlands called ideal which has now been subsumed by Wero to join an European alternative. In the end the idea is simple. All participating bank accounts have lorum/nostrum accounts for the pairs. Whenever the Wero transaction succeeds the money is wired internally directly. I’m not sure whether this mechanism will be replaced by SEPA direct debit entirely.

epolanski•11m ago

As political instability has shown, it is a bad idea to have all your payments go through a single, weaponizable, failure point in New York.

Europe needs to be functionally as independent as possible.

hiroto_lemon•10m ago

Wero rides on SEPA SCT Inst, already mandatory EU-wide. P2P will land fast; merchant displacement is hard because card interchange funds the chargeback layer SEPA doesn't replicate.

stldev•9m ago

Tant mieux pour eux.

I suppose some added sovereignty is to be expected when your closest ally extorts, threatens annexation and slams you with tariffs.

slau•8m ago

Maybe the original source that the current article links to is a better link: https://epicompany.eu/media-insights/bancomat-bizum-epi-sibs...

trumbitta2•8m ago

Spoiler: Europeans use whatever their banks provide.

mcv•8m ago

Weru is basically an EU-wide version of the Dutch iDeal system, which in my opinion is the gold standard of how internet payment should work. I shouldn't have to fill in any card numbers on the site of the merchant (which is unsafe). Instead, the payment should redirect me to my bank, where I authorize the payment through my own bank's security system. I've always been annoyed by the need to type in sensitive card info on all sorts of merchant sites. I hope that with EU-wide use, Weru will receive much broader support now.

jim180•6m ago

as it was the case in Baltic states since forever. Payments with CC came much later.

ramon156•6m ago

I think any dutchie can vouch that iDeal has been amazing. I would also like to add that Wise has been amazing for american payments. I needed it for Anthropic at the time, and this worked good enough

Shalomboy•7m ago

I'm legitimately curious how these American payment companies held onto their worldwide dominance for so long. I'm used to seeing the sign at restaurants of all the other cards they accept, but for so long I've only ever seen Amex, Discover, Visa, and Mastercard in folks' hands.

Keyframe•3m ago

geopolitics, dollar, and then network effect. in that order.

baalimago•6m ago

Good! Now please remove dependency of alphabet + apple for bank apps, and we're golden.

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Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment

Comments

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