Note that Wero is amongs others based on the Dutch iDEAL [1] system, which was introduced 21 years ago. Virtually every Dutch web shop supports iDEAL (and many only support iDEAL) as well as international payment services such as PayPal and Stripe. As a result, the vast majority of transactions of Dutch webshops go through iDEAL. It is really a super-nice frictionless system.
iDEAL also supports P2P payments through Tikkie (ABN AMRO) or the payment request option of other banks. You basically show a QR code or send a link and the person paying goes through the iDEAL flow to transfer the money. Tikkie (and the other bank's similar and compatible systems) have been one of the primary methods for P2P transfers for many years now.
I am really happy that we are getting the same system across multiple countries now. Contactless payments through Wero are also planned, so that we can finally become independent of Google/Apple Pay for contactless payments using a phone.
[1] EPI purchased the Dutch iDEAL and Belgian Payconiq and mentioned on multiple occasions that Wero is based on the foundations of iDEAL. They kept iDEAL running as a separate system in order not to disturb it during the upbringing of Wero, but iDeal is going to migrated to Wero the coming period.
> 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…
To be honest I like the idea of forcing merchants to accept credit cards in addition to this.
Regardless of how much I like the idea of a payments layer without Visa/Mastercard fees, I think the rich engineers of hackernews and 10,000 overpaid consultants who worked on this massively underestimate how valuable an interest-free 30 day bridge loan is to average people (and businesses) on monthly payroll.
Combine this with the consumer protections and threat of a dispute (which almost always sides with the buyer) and it generally tilts power to the consumer in most credit card transactions, if the consumer has autopay setup (huge caveat of course).
This new layer is totally neutral, and removes the detriment to the merchant in terms of fees/risk, but not sure it’s actually as good for the market as claimed here. For me it’s a net loss, and harming consumers ultimately harms the merchant in terms of willingness to buy things. If it becomes trendy for merchants to start refusing credit cards to use this instead, I will be WAY less likely to take a risk on a purchase I’m not 100% confident about.
Im not willing to try new products from most startups for example if I can’t buy on a credit card.
This applies more to the USA than to Europe, where "credit cards" are in fact mostly debit cards (cursory research says 71% vs 26% in America), and ordinary people tend not to be up to their necks in consumer debt. Anecdotally, I've never used an actual credit card in my life.
Data from the IMF says European households hold a similar level of debt if not more (especially the case in northern Europe):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household...
The US used to be an outlier in this regard if you look back to 2000, but over the past 25+ years American households have stayed pretty much the same while their European counterparts have grown debt substantially.
It is almost entirely mortgage debt backed by the collateral of housing.
Not the most productive asset to be leveraging, especially in rapidly declining birth rate countries, no?
Meanwhile, while headline credit card interest rates in the US look insane (like 20%+), in reality loss-adjusted yield actually realized by lenders and paid by consumers (after renegotiated settlements, bankruptcies, payment plans, etc) is less than half that.
You can look at the realized return on personal credit lending on companies balance sheets, its basically like 3.7%. Maybe a few percent more return than what a 30 year mortgage lender can expect going forward (now that we're returning to post-GFC 'normalized' interest rates).
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.
We don't, it's the same ideal 2.0 with a different logo. Literally nothing changed and I saw the exact commits too.
Not really. They just changed the logo to make people get used to the name. The next phase where they start migrating the iDEAL infra into Wero starts in October:
https://www.betaalvereniging.nl/actueel/volgende-fase-migrat...
English version: https://www.betaalvereniging.nl/en/news/next-phase-of-ideal-...
It's not the same system. iDEAL supports banks to implement payment in their online banking websites, while Wero is Google/Apple ecosystem exclusive.
Wero’s goal is to become a European payment system. Like an iDEAL across EU countries. That requires buy-in from major EU banks, some of which are shareholders of EPI, the company behind Wero.
It’s also a response to the ECB’s digital Euro, a way that banks show the central bank “hey, we the banks are actually capable of creating a good EU-level payment system”.
> while Wero is Google/Apple ecosystem exclusive
It's barely launched in more than 5 EU countries. It's not part of the specs or requirements to only be available in the Google / Apple ecosystem.
From their site:
>It is not possible to send Wero payments to friends & family via a web browser or on a computer
https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599074240...
So its pretty clear they have no plans to support plain browser access. Which is a very strange decision to me.
It's primarily an online payment system, not a money transfer system. It has worked since forever (20+ years, it's a rebranded Dutch system) from web browser. Still does.
The horse's mouth seems to contradict this. The subject is Wero, not Ideal.
> It's not part of the specs or requirements to only be available in the Google / Apple ecosystem.
but at the moment, it is. so he's right to be nervous. from one american duopoly to another.
but i share your optimism that they eventually allow this to work without them.
The commenter is stating that as a fact, which is spreading information that's not true to others reading that.
Perfect is the enemy of good as always. Having a system that is currently available on the two biggest mobile platforms for the launch (Covering probably 99.9% of consumers) is already much better than piping every single transaction through two US mega corps.
Replies from the German GLS bank on mastodon imply that EPI does not support the use case where banks add it to their web interface
https://ruhr.social/@glsbank/116215341782832097 https://ruhr.social/@glsbank/116125936995037426
> Good morning, it's not "our" fault. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about it—Wero is a service offered by EPI, and they've decided to take a "mobile-first" approach for now. Warm regards from Bochum!
As for the prospects of ever seeing banking apps outside of android/ios, there is only https://www.das-parlament.de/wirtschaft/finanzen/wir-bauen-m...
> What about smartphones that run on free and open-source software instead of the commercial operating systems used by the iPhone or Google? > Tanja Müller-Ziegler: This market is still very much a niche one. There are still too few providers, which is why it’s hardly worth offering banking apps for these devices.
> Perfect is the enemy of good as always.
I'm no expert on iDEAL, but being 20 years old, it's older than Android and iOS and presumably supported web based payments from the very beginning. I really don't understand why nowadays people seem to think that app exclusivity is somehow a natural starting point. It's a relatively recent invention.
> they've decided to take a "mobile-first" approach for now
That's hardly a confirmation that it will never be possible ("for now"). It seems like a fair tradeoff for a launch when almost everyone has a smartphone and that's already enforced like that for many parts of life (I'm not saying it's great, but it's a valid tradeoff when alternative options exist) like banking or public transport where the happy path often is a phone app.
You'd think that basic infrastructure such as payment systems had higher standards than just "most" people having access to it.
It's fine as long as we have alternatives, but if online shops were to start to phase out SEPA payments in favor of Wero and Wero-only shops were to start popping it, it would be a real problem.
Btw the solution already exists: It's still relatively small scale but GNU Taler is live in Switzerland. The EU could make regulation to make it easier to adopt at any time it wants.
iDEAL supports banks to implement payment in their online banking websites
So does Wero, as I cited in another comment:
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....
It's not the same system.
I said that it is based on the iDEAL system:
Wero is built on the foundation of iDEAL, backed by 16 major European banks – including the Dutch banks behind iDEAL.
https://ideal.nl/en/naar-wero
The European Payments Initiative (EPI) acquired the Dutch payment system iDEAL with the aim of making it the standard payment solution across all European countries. [...] The first step is to make iDEAL the standard in France and Germany because the countries don’t yet have a standard payment system for e-commerce, according to AD. Customers in the Netherlands will notice little of this.
https://nltimes.nl/2023/04/25/dutch-payment-processor-ideal-... / https://www.ad.nl/economie/online-betalingssysteem-ideal-wor...
Really? I frequently use Wero but never installed their app. I use it through my bank application on /e/os