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/

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.

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.

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

What's the benefit of this over contactless payments?

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.

> Given EuroPA has done a token amount of transactions to date, I’m not sure anyone should hold their breaths.

The Spanish equivalent (Bizum) is merging into Wero is not a token use case, it's absolutely massive here. The absolute standard for peer-to-peer payments, more than 30 million users (>65% of the population), and they already launched contactless terminals for in-person commercial payments this month (https://euroweeklynews.com/2026/04/03/bizum-goes-contactless...).

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

Europe: <launches European payment initiative>

America: NOT LIKE THAT!!!

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

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.

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.

I wouldn't be so sure, at least not this administration. Fragmented monetary systems provide more opportunities for creative accountants and that's something the people running everything in the US seem to benefit from.

This action is a response to the tariff regime imposed by the US. The current administration decided that it was going to use its role as the leader of the global hegemon to threaten and coerce other countries, and actions like this are a result. The American government can threaten them all they want, problem is that they've been threatening everyone since Day 1.

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.

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

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

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

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

Sounds totally fine to me. I guess just like there are many Mastodon instances: mastodon.social, fosstodon, infosec.exchange, mas.to, etc., but one protocol by which they talk to each other.

ahahah!

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

I can feel Galactus's pain.

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

SEPA Instant Payments also solves that.

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

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

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

PIX from Brazil is even better, to be honest. But this is a big improvement over online CC payment.

I lived in the NL and Brazil, so I can compare the two, and while iDEAL is pretty good, PIX is easier to understand, explain, and deal with.

PIX has more variants, you can use it for recurrent payment, split payments, financing, cashout and almost all things a CC can do nowadays.

I would say Tikkie is almost as good and easy to use as PIX usecase wise but has less adoption and variants, also it belongs to ABN which is completely different from PIX approach.

There is a 3DSecure system for existing Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. After typing your card numbers, the transaction doesn’t immediately go through but you are also redirected to the bank’s system. Banks can ask you to use a hardware token, an app, or any other second factor to approve the transaction.

It’s a shame that this system isn’t ubiquitous for the rest of us not in EU.

This is one of the reasons I opt for PayPal in the US when I have the choice. I've been in too many breaches. Direct to bank would be better, but I trust PayPal's security more than a random ecommerce website's security.

I'm annoyed by redirects that won't work if you set a different default browser or incognito mode as default for new tabs. Total BS.

Card numbers just work.

Also, payment "apps" that pack their own web engine and need 300-500 megs D/L, plus refuse to run on rooted / "unvetted" systems. No fucks given! Go away, give a browser and numbers.

In fact a unique payment ID (e.g QR) to "push" payment is even safer. No redirect. That's how payment should be. Not an authorization given to pull from us, but the agency for us to push the amount.

Banks and Visa/Mastercard probably love that you fill out your CC details on an online store, and next time you can just 1-click pay. Probably causes a big jump in revenue/profit. That's why they never innovated much.

Of course, it is incorrect, and digital payments everywhere (on a kiosk or online) should be intentional pushes, not pulls.

The redirect to a bank is worrying, isn’t it trivial to fake redirecting to a fake bank ?

Interestingly in a number of African Countries (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania etc) , we have “Mobile Money”, Payments are instant, via USSD, no internet required, I can even pay online using USSD push.This is a classical example of humans using what they have to build what they need , no fancy internet enabled smart phones required. I can send money anytime instantly to my grandma deep in the village. She can withdraw from or top up her account in the numerous mobile money stalls that are everywhere. You pay school dues, medical bills , groceries via mobile money. I don’t remember the last time I visited a bank, hell I can even get an instant loan by just dailing *165# on my no internet feature phone.

Most online merchants redirect me to my bank's web page when I enter my Visa credit card number. In theory it should be possible to have a card number that by itself is useless and always requires an external confirmation?

there's the polish BLIK which is basically the same idea and there are probably a dozen more in other countries; need consolidation in this space tbh

> iDeal system, which in my opinion is the gold standard of how internet payment should work

* Is it? It doesn't support basic features like pre-authorization. I'm not even sure if it supports setting up a payment mandate without triggering an immediate payment at all (pretty sure it didn't a couple of years ago.

* I think it hands over the customer's IBAN, which isn't really that much safer than a credit card number, since any merchant can trigger a direct debit using it. While you can trigger a chargeback, that requires you to actively monitor for fraudulent transactions, which a decent system wouldn't allow in the first place.

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

Bank deals, especially in Europe where debit cards is more popular than credit the issuing banks preferred deals largely dictate what network you'll be on.

There is a huge first movers advantage on infrastructure.

Additionally until recently most political parties and people in the EU didn't see this as national security related infrastructure. That's why it was allowed to be privatized and handled by external companies. There is a lot more critical digital infrastructure that is being moved away from. Think Microsoft office suite, operating systems, cloud systems and more.

Amex is not very popular in Europe. Discover... I am not sure, not that much.

Visa and MasterCard are everywhere though

UK Open Banking is a counter example to this argument. It’s been a huge success. Transfers between accounts are seamless, and I never need to authorize Plaid to maintain a permanent session in a headless Chromium instance reading my bank account. The APIs are well-defined, universally supported, and include authorization scopes for viewing balance, authorizing transfers, etc.

That said, I don’t do many p2p payments in the UK (mostly because I’m an adult now, not splitting every bill like I was in college). And I wouldn’t like to add every one of my friends to my banking transfer history. The UK is missing something like Venmo with wide adoption. I assume the kids these days mostly use features like Apple Cash or Monzo transfers.

And when anything goes wrong, that's a ruh-ro.

When I give someone money I don't feel like I'm sharing it at all. Sounds like it goes from a "my-oh" to a "your-oh" and is aptly named from the jump.

There's supposedly also an Italian pun based on "vero" in there.

I've heard pretty much every European English-as-a-second-language speaker pronounced the W differently, though, and pronunciation of the E isn't even consistent within native English populations. I can't wait for the "vee-ro? oh, you mean whay-ro" discussions between tourists and stores.

To be fair, crypto is anti-consumer.

what until you understand what is next, cdbc and restricted digital money. Enjoy it.

One silver lining of the current U.S. regime's behaviour is how it's forcing us to move out of the local minima of over-Americanization that we've been stuck in for too long.

Go to store, select "pay by Wero". Get redirected to payment screen where I select my bank. My bank just shows a QR code that I scan with my bank app, authenticate the usual way, redirect back to store, job done.

Yes at the pay page there's a 'pay by X' list of options, you choose it.

You then typically have two choices: scan QR with your phone or login to your bank.

I normally open my bank app on my phone which signs in via my face (iPhone), I then press the scan button (first screen), point at my phone at the screen to read the QR code, the transaction pops up on my phone, I press confirm and again it signs via my face. Then you're done.

If you were shopping on the phone it's even simpler of course as the pay button opens up the transaction in your bank app right away, but typically I shop on my laptop after research.

I've had this for almost 20 years by the way in the Netherlands, but now it's pivoted to the EU standard.

When we need that, we can use Apple/Android pay in many many places or just spin up a temporary visa/mastercard with platforms like Revolut.

UPI would be even better if it were easier for tourists to onboard and use it while traveling in India. The general mindset seems to be that there's enough domestic tourism that making things easy for foreigners isn't that important. I think that really hurts the country's economy.

They make buttloads. Debit cards still require a cut for VISA/MasterCard.

Debit cards have scheme fees and interchange rates just like credit cards. Interchange rates for credit and debit cards in the EU are actually very comparable and both very low, which is very different from many other parts of the world (e.g. in the US, debit interchange is effectively a flat fee per transaction).

Visa and Mastercard make money on scheme fees paid to them by both issuers and acquirers (i.e. indirectly merchants), not interchange.

There's an indirect impact of lower interchange rates, as issuers will usually not be willing to pay more than 100% of what they're earning in interchange in scheme fees. Acquirers have no such implicit limit, though.