Yet another Hacker News

European payments groups join forces to challenge US dominance

37 points vrganj 1 hour ago 47 comments

rattlesnakedave 48 minutes ago | parent

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

hvb2 46 minutes ago | parent

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 40 minutes ago | parent

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...

iso1631 23 minutes ago | parent

Or just someone with a $5 wrench

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6eq84eygz0qo

M95D 37 minutes ago | parent

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

soco 37 minutes ago | parent

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

M95D 11 minutes ago | parent

It's not for you. It's for companies. They're implementing it first for person-to-person transactions just to test the system. Wouldn't want a big corp to lose millions of euro because of a bug!

M95D 43 minutes ago | parent

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

bilekas 40 minutes ago | parent

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

jmclnx 39 minutes ago | parent

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 28 minutes ago | parent

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 38 minutes ago | parent

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.

Lio 35 minutes ago | parent

Not sure it could be worse for privacy but even it was it would still stop Visa and Mastercard from refusing to carry payments.

That's exactly what they did to high profile European judges. You can't pull that stunt and expect to get away with it long term.

https://www.euronews.com/2026/02/18/us-sanctions-turn-intern...

hhh 24 minutes ago | parent

is Wero based on apps? iDeal only involves the banking app for me, the iDeal part is just a website

BlackRabbit1 41 minutes ago | parent

Attempt number 2000?

M95D 39 minutes ago | parent

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

andor 18 minutes ago | parent

And this seems to be another attempt at that. We already had the European Payments Initiative (with Wero), and now they are starting the European Network for Payments. Sounds like the People's Front of Judea vs. the Judean People's Front.

Edit: There was also the Euro Alliance of Payment Schemes

whizzter 25 minutes ago | parent

Mastercard pretty much depended on Eurocard/Europay for it's European reach (and vice versa) before the 2 merged, European institutions didn't have a problem selling out important infrastructure because Europeans overall trusted American stability and cooperation.

bilekas 37 minutes ago | parent

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 36 minutes ago | parent

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 27 minutes ago | parent

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

jeroenhd 27 minutes ago | parent

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.

M95D 24 minutes ago | parent

> to convince payment processors that phones can be trusted to manage finances

Phones can NOT be trusted to manage finances. They should issue EU credit/debit cards instead.

petcat 23 minutes ago | parent

> 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.

You're basically talking about "government Android phone" since it is built into the chips on the device.

I wonder how 330 million average Europeans will respond to not being able to use iPhones or Google Android phones anymore because they are instead being forced to use "government Android phone" for safety from USA.

I think they'll actually just revolt against the government instead

zb3 19 minutes ago | parent

You mean Huawei? Europeans are ok with that, kernel being encrypted or not.

vrganj 16 minutes ago | parent

Nobody's gonna revolt for Big Tech, man. Be real.

petcat 4 minutes ago | parent

You underestimate how much people love their iPhones, and how much they will hate being forced to use "government Android phone" instead

zb3 22 minutes ago | parent

Yep, they can allow GrapheneOS, right now. So let's pressure them into doing that.

drivingmenuts 25 minutes ago | parent

The hardware is harder to replace, but payment systems aren’t intrinsically tied to the operating systems, yet, except for encryption , which is handled on-device.

bilekas 25 minutes ago | parent

They don't though, unless I'm missing something stupid there is parity across all national options. And here for example the bank itself has Bancomat AND Visa as an option to pay by at a POS or online etc.

This will allow me to use my card online with a merchant in Germany for example and use my Bancomat process (whatever the new interface is called) will be the gateway.

abcd_f 24 minutes ago | parent

You can't be serious. Getting rid of the need to pass purchases through these two American behemoths will be a huge step in the right direction.

sho_hn 7 minutes ago | parent

Once you have payment processing in-house, the decision of what devices to support is yours to make.

If you don't, two lock-ins and network effects reinforce each other.

carlosjobim 36 minutes ago | parent

And the benefits for users would be?

asimpletune 28 minutes ago | parent

Probably lower prices since there’s competition between payment processors

carlosjobim 23 minutes ago | parent

There's already competition between payment processors, and not lower prices.

furst-blumier 17 minutes ago | parent

Isn't it actually "competition" in the visa/mastercard case?

vrganj 25 minutes ago | parent

Being able to pay across Europe with the systems they already have instead of only being able to use them in their own country.

carlosjobim 23 minutes ago | parent

You can already do that with Visa and Mastercard and IBAN.

M95D 19 minutes ago | parent

Not everyone.

https://www.irishtimes.com/world/us/2025/12/12/its-surreal-u...

This is probably what pushed them to accelerate the implementation.

vrganj 18 minutes ago | parent

Yeah, but the point is to be able to do it without Visa and Mastercard.

IBAN, I'll grant you. But it's not exactly intuitive.

carlosjobim 13 minutes ago | parent

I understand that this is the point, but what is the benefit for users?

iso1631 7 minutes ago | parent

American companies at the behest of American leadership which has turned is back on free trade and has weaponised trade against its allies.

Removing reliance on American tooling is an essential security matter, it's going to take some time to unpick 80 years of interdependence though.

bilekas 23 minutes ago | parent

Not being under the heel of a US financial Duopoly when their dear leader decides to tell them to charge 100%.

Regional Financial autonomy is a very attractive benefit.

zb3 25 minutes ago | parent

They could easily permit GrapheneOS without compromising on security. Not doing so is either a sign of gross incompetence or plain malice.

Diti 24 minutes ago | parent

Challenging US dominance by implementing your European payment platform on AWS? Weird take…

silon42 23 minutes ago | parent

I remember when there was Eurocard/Mastercard...

pjc50 19 minutes ago | parent

One thing I'd like to check: what are the actual exclusion rules for these systems? The Visa/MC threat to anything deemed vaguely adult content is well documented, but what is and is not allowed on Wero?