European payments groups join forces to challenge US dominance

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2026/1001/1593639-european-payments-group/

24•vrganj•1h ago

Comments

rattlesnakedave•22m ago

For international payments anything other than a stablecoin sent on already common rails feels like beating around the bush.

hvb2•20m ago

Why do you need a stablecoin if you can send the currency itself directly? If I have euros and the recipient wants euros, why would I need a stablecoin?

Solution looking for a problem?

Lio•14m ago

Not only is it a solution looking for a problem but it also opens up exchange fees and chance to be more easily robbed by North Korean government backed hackers looking to evade sanctions.

https://www.euronews.com/2026/09/28/north-korean-hackers-sus...

M95D•11m ago

Anonimity, at least until someone figures out who owns the wallet.

soco•11m ago

I need international payments maybe once a month. Sample size of one.

M95D•16m ago

It's all based on phone apps, replacing Visa/Mastercard dependency with Apple and Google dependency. Far worse for privacy IMO.

bilekas•14m ago

No it's not. Here in Italy your debit card allows you to pay by bancomat or Visa.

jmclnx•13m ago

With GDPR I think it sill will be much much better that what VISA/Mastercard keeps on your activities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...

M95D•2m ago

Well... no so much in practice. My bank automatically enrolled my personal phone number into the system. I asked them to remove it 2 months ago. One month ago I received a reply that they're working on it. I may be the only person in this country that asked for this - they're now probably thinking which is cheaper: to pay the GDPR fine, repeatedly, or patch their banking software and re-certify it, or maybe refuse to have me as their client.

Anyway, I don't know if you actually read GDPR, but the government (& various agencies) and the bank are both exempted from GDPR. They will all know everything I bought through this system, from where and at what price.

soco•12m ago

Nevertheless, that app could be one day running with F-Droid and such... or that's what I dream. The infrastructure is only one piece of the huge dependency puzzle.

BlackRabbit1•14m ago

Attempt number 2000?

M95D•13m ago

Attempt at ... what? All the national payment systems are already working. They're now interconnecting them.

bilekas•11m ago

So many people commenting that seem to miss what this is. It's the merging of national systems to simply allow a second option. Meaning no influence oversize from the duopoly. See steam news with visa for an example of then throwing their weight.

petcat•10m ago

These all require Google or Apple devices both by the seller and the buyer. Wero explicitly does not even support non-Google Android devices.

I'm not sure that replacing Visa and MasterCard is really that big of a sovereignty move considering the pervasive dominance American mobile OS tech has. It's a much harder ecosystem to replace.

znnajdla•1m ago

You've got to start somewhere. You peel each layer off the dependency stack one at a time.

jeroenhd•1m ago

Updating an app to not require the Play Store is a lot easier than switching payment provider backend.

Wero can fix the dependency on Google in a day, I don't think the dependency on Google is as bad as the broader dependency on Mastercard/Visa is.

That said, I'd much prefer a European implementation of the same remote attestation APIs that Google uses to convince payment processors that phones can be trusted to manage finances.

On iOS you don't really have a choice so until someone runs Linux on an iPhone, iPhone users are just screwed.

carlosjobim•10m ago

And the benefits for users would be?

asimpletune•2m ago

Probably lower prices since there’s competition between payment processors

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