> and many only support iDEAL

Actually, look closer when you pay using Ideal (as we all do). You will notice that usually there are several payment methods, and these almost always include credit cards.

The reason for this is not because the Dutch like to pay using credit cards (most Dutch never use one), but because of a little known law regarding online stores. It is, in fact, not allowed to only offer payment options that require the customer to pay the full amount upfront. And Ideal (and Wero) do just that: you order a T-shirt for €20, you pay €20 upfront, the shirt gets shipped, and you receive it.

Now have a look at this note:

https://www.acm.nl/nl/verkoop-aan-consumenten/de-koop-sluite...

> U mag maximaal 50% vooruitbetaling vragen voor producten die u nog moet leveren.

> Dit betekent dat u standaard mag aanbieden om het hele bedrag te betalen. Maar u geeft klanten ook de mogelijkheid om minimaal 50% pas na levering te betalen.

There are almost no online stores which offer this of course. It's just not part of this commercial model. Not for a T-shirt (or whatever).

So what is the trick the government itself even recommends?

Credit cards.

https://ondernemersplein.overheid.nl/geldzaken-en-belastinge...

Something about the way credit card payments reserve payments initially and the way credit cards offer consumer protection services makes this a payment option which, apparently, fulfils this 50% after delivery rule…

I thought Wero is based on ideal 2.0, which in itself is based on payconiq. Which is quite different from th old ideal system

What was the iDEAL payment option now says iDeal WERO. The Dutch are already using WERO for a couple of months now.

It's not the same system. iDEAL supports banks to implement payment in their online banking websites, while Wero is Google/Apple ecosystem exclusive.

If Wero is going to be similar to iDEAL, which it is based on, the payment flow will be through your bank's app. Heck, even the Wero app description says so:

The Wero app is available only for account holders from the German bank Postbank and the French bank La Banque Postale.

Are you a customer of another Wero-enabled bank? If so, you can easily use Wero within your banking app.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.epicompany....

I have seen quite some people downloading their banking apps through the Aurora store (admittedly, it's a frontend for the Play Store, but you don't need an account or the app). Or you can use something like APKMirror and verify that they have the correct signing keys.

Of course, if they need Play Services or Play Integrity basic, then you need sandboxed Google Play or microG. If your bank does remote attestation through Play Integrity, then it is game over, but it is worth contacting your bank. E.g. some banks have added the GrapheneOS signing keys and added support for AOSP remote attestation.

While researching Wero initially, I was confused too that no APK is offered. Maybe we can change that.grbn

But you can use Wero also from your good old desktop PC, right? Sure, paying in a restaurant with Wero for example might need this, but I think this is a really, really great first step in the right direction

It’s fine to decouple from US payment and financial infra today and punt on decoupling from US big tech in the future. These changes take time and effort at scale, so it’s about being directionally accurate, not doing all the changes all at once. “You eat an elephant one bite at a time.” Europe is eating the financial infra bites right now. There are other bites to be taken over the next several years.

Similar to Airbus moving critical apps from AWS to France’s Scaleway. Flexing the muscle needed to do the rest, and starting with the most important.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

They are allowed to set caps, I've seen them down to around €5000 per transaction so it's not literally all transfers. Still free to transfer above, just takes more than a few seconds to do so, presumably for fraud/theft protection. Some banks will make that a daily limit, or configurable, there's some flexibility but they're mandated to justify all limits with no arbitrary discrimination against instant transfers.

In practice, obviously most personal payments are well under that margin, so within-EU bank transfers are defacto instant everywhere. Most banking apps I've seen don't even show an 'instant/slow' option any more, it's just all instant.

A lot of banks won’t even give you the option of a non-instant transfer now, at least here in Portugal. Though non-instant transfers can in theory be recalled since there is some time before the money gets to the destination account, my bank even gives a warning now when doing a transfer to ensure I have the details right because they can not recall a transaction after the money arrives.

My bank sets the default to "Standard (1-3 Days). Many forget to click the checkbox. I have also heard: "I only do instant when I need it" implying some implicit cost/limit they fear. This is probably still worth it for Banks. As not _all_ transfers are now the dreadful super expensive instant variety.

You have 1 hour to recall and cancel a transfer, but an instant transfer is non cancellable

You can get the domains from your local European nations registrar though. How is the American conglomerate going to prevent that?

Can you elaborate?

Can confirm they do this in Canada too. Though I'm not sure they have much of a presence outside of Quebec.

It was very cool to try, and very much a "why doesn't everyone do this?" feature. I've never seen it anywhere else.

> they manufacture many of the products they sell

If you're familiar with labor disputes around Decathlon, i think a more fair representation is they get other people to manufacture it for them, in what some NGOs call human trafficking / modern slavery.

Is there somewhere they don't do this?

QR codes are still less convenient when you're paying using the same mobile device you're using to generate the BLIK codes.

Doubly so when the phone is a foldable, so you can keep the bank open in a popup over the browser or app you're buying in.

I'd much prefer NFC if I could see how much I was paying and had to always confirm it -- I understand this wouldn't have worked with physical cards but I wish it was an option on my phone.

They most likely don't charge fees on consumer.

Usually the fee is on merchant (and it's few % depending on region regulations etc.) Payment providers such as Wero are doing direct bank transfer, which is usually fee-less, but then they can afford to put a on-merchant fee that's much lower than what credit card companies are charging.

Thus the model is win-win-win: Consumer doesn't pay more, Merchant pays less, and Wero gets their share.

Free for individuals, but paid if you're the business it seems from what I've found? If that's the case, it seems to be the same as a card in the US and I wouldn't be surprised if some businesses try to pass it on like they do with cards.

[0] https://www.mollie.com/growth/wero-payment-guide#:~:text=How...

[1] https://www.bnpparibasfortis.be/en/public/faq/how-much-does-...

>Our pricing is clear and merchant-friendly: a small percentage fee with built-in caps

https://wero-wallet.eu/e-m-commerce

So they charge a fee, but they don't specify what a "small percentage" is.

The payment service provider (like Stripe or Adyen).

We don't support shit until the regular strongly suggests we do and then it takes about three years to do pretty much nothing, but perfectly on time (not on time actually, ts' a lie)

There's two functions of Wero: peer-to-peer and consumer-to-business transactions. TFA is about consumer-to-business.

If you look at the video for how Wero online payments work (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu5_X3oSgHM), you'll see that an EPC QR code could just as well be used (with a banking app installed instead of Wero).

With Wero you probably also get automatic processing of the incoming payment, without having to connect the financial transaction to a purchase yourself. But payment through bank transfers is also available through the payment service providers and costs less than Wero (at least it costs less when using Mollie; the Stripe fee is the same for Wero and bank transfer, and Adyen apparently hasn't published the Wero fee yet). So you'd still get the same service for less money.

> Here (NL) contactless payments works with every debit card, physical or stored Apple Google/Pay, in every store

That's how it works in the US as well. You might be conflating Apple Pay with Apple Wallet, which stores your credit cards for tap-to-pay. Most people in the US use Apple Wallet/Google Wallet to digitally store their credit/debit cards, and use those cards to pay at the store by tapping the POS terminal.

For example, I use Apple Wallet for nearly every transaction, but I never use Apple Pay/Apple Card as the payment method.

Last time I visited NL many shops (including Albert Heijn) only supported Maestro, so as a foreigner you effectively can't pay with Visa or Mastercard.

The market wants to take a cut per transaction, perpetually. At a high profit margin.

This is one where not the market but a country/group of countries need to rollout their own public payments so fees are minimal to zero.

Ideal was a result of free market banking though.

> The system was conceived by the Dutch banks ABN Amro, ING Bank, Postbank N.V. and Rabobank, to develop a single system for online payments that could be used by all banks.

Currently owned by EPI:

> The European Payments Initiative (EPI) is a unified digital payment service launched in 2020 and backed by sixteen founding European banks and payment service providers.

I mean you could have a single protocol and then various different providers still competing, like email, or how even for Visa or Mastercard there's a bunch of different banks that partner up.

Almost like regulation is sometimes helpful if the market doesn't solve it.