It is very similar to many other mobile money systems. What make it different is that it is pan European

Taler is about moving money without necessarily using a bank account

Holefully more providers will pop up in the years to come.

Edit: for some banks it will just forward to the bank's app. So most likely it works as long as your bank supports degoogled Android, similar to how iDEAL + Tikkie works on degoogled Android with most Dutch banks.

It’s a difficult thing, we don’t want to have to force smartphone choices but the number of users without one these devices is so vanishingly small it’s very difficult to change the legislation in order to support them too.

I think the happy middle ground is making this system also work with bank issued cards.

From https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599098295... it seems they don't even support phones with developer settings turned on, much less custom ROMs, rooted or jaibroken phones.

But with another bank, when I had to install the Wero app, it didn't work at all.

Pan-European payments are the bigger deal.

It’s not great, but it’s not bad either.

The problem is how do you initiate this payment? Some kind of scannable code or nfc interaction seems to be the missing part. I’d also like to see some kind of physical card also work for those who don’t want or are unable to have an attestable device with them.

You're in the Netherlands, and you are going to buy something in an on-line store. Steam perhaps, or any Dutch retailer.

You put the game in your Steam cart, and go to pay. You select Ideal (which Steam provides as an option), you pick your bank, and you follow the on-screen instructions (but you probably do that pretty much automatically). Usually that means scanning a QR code with your bank app on your smartphone where you confirm the amount and recipient, but you can use a physical card reader with your debit card for an OTP to use as well and do it in your bank's online environment in the browser.

That process is what the whole of Europe wants (Wero builds on the Dutch Ideal). It is stupid simple, and once you've used it you don't want to deal with credit cards and bank transfers for buying a thing on-line any more.

That's all there is to it. There is a whole country which already does this, and it works so well everyone wants it. No major US companies needed (big plus these days), and no parasites like Klarna either. Just an easy way to pay a shop using your bank account, just like you use a debit card in physical stores do the same.

For decades, european countries like Netherlands or German had cheaper alternatives, e.g. in Germany the old "EC Card" and now "girocard". That costs a shop just a fixed amount of cent... and a very low amount.

(That is BTW one of THE reasons why US travellers won't see "Credit cards accepted" in every store ... our alternatives are just cheaper, so the market decided)

Also, Visa and Mastercard as US companies. So they are sniffing on all european transactions.

And it happened more than once that US companies tried to execute bullshit US laws in Europe. Example: there was once an german online shop that sold cuban cigars. Eventually the US website that hosted the shop said "Oh, that's not allowed" --- despite it perfectly legal by german law. And they didn't just delete this cuban cigars, they disabled the whole shop, with IIRC 20000 EUR positive balance. And the shop owner didn't even get his money, since their customer service sucked and was only automated response and untrained indian call center clerks.

So no, we cannot really depend on US services. They are expensive, they customer service sucks, they are sniffing either directly or let the NSA sniff everything.

And, bank-wise the USA seems to be some decades back (not online-bank-wise!). I mean, they still have pay cheques? Not direct bank transfers? Shudder. No wonder that, if they have no alternatives, they think everything must be Visa or Mastercard operated.

EU local payments already work instantly and feeless in many countries through SEPA. Lot of these countries are already on trajectory to gradually get off visa/mastercard for domestic payments as every ecommerce store pushes SEPA as the default payment to save on fees.

The only entities that need/want "instant, non-recourse payments" are fraudsters.

I don’t imagine that’s so very hard to implement later though.

Wero is an initiative from a group of European banks united in EPI (European Payment Initiative). The tech is partially based on the Dutch iDEAL (which EPI acquired a few years ago).

iDEAL has been around in The Netherlands for 20 years and is used for most Dutch online payments (also supported by Shopify and Stripe) and P2P payments through Tikkie/betaalverzoek. The whole system is really nice and smooth and definitely much nicer than PayPal in many ways. Almost no online stores use Paypal here because iDEAL works so well.

Given this history and the iDEAL people working there, I'm sure Wero will be fine after a few iterations.

And I've always wondered, isn't it kind of unsafe, if someone gets my number, they can learn where I store my money and what my name is.

Dunno about the desktop, but if you're on a phone, there's often a button "open in the bank app". I actually like that you need to approve it in the banking app, it's like a single source of truth no one else but me has access to. Dunno why it would be "way slower", it's just an additional click?

It's not possible to register the same phone number (or email) at two banks simultaneously. The last registration wins and the associated bank account will switch on the backend when you try this.

Also, EU bureaucrats have little to do with it. Wero is the third attempt by a subset of private European banks to establish a new pan-European payment network.

[1] https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599201237...