Comment by pjmlp
17 days ago
On Portugal we have the Multibanco network, which already provided Internet like services for buying stuff on the terminals and eventually graduated to have online payments as well, however only in Portugal.
Likewise, in Germany we can have SEPA for most stuff.
And in Greece there is Viva.
Problem is getting something that actually works across all European countries.
The problem isn't just getting something that works across all European countries. It's getting something that works globally.
While we may make most of our payments within EU, basically everyone still occasionally pays for something outside of EU, either online or when they travel. This means if the new thing only works in EU, every European will still need and have a MasterCard/Visa even if they use it less often than before.
This is still a massive amount of leverage - MC/Visa still have the ability to block payments made from EU citizens/companies to outside.
The problem isn't just getting something that works across all European countries. It's getting something that works globally.
The Dutch iDEAL, on which Wero is based, already works for a lot of global payments. E.g. Stripe and Shopify support iDEAL:
https://stripe.com/en-nl/payment-method/ideal?__=
https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/payments/shopify-payments...
I regularly get offered iDEAL as a payment option when ordering outside of Europe.
You can buy things from your local Amazon or national equivalent that come from outside using this systems, so, you are not so restricted to EU sellers.
I suppose the most problematic would be traveling. I recently when outside the EU and was surprise how smooth the process was using my Visa card, to the point I didn't use any local currency.
On the other hand, I recently buy books from the UK and it get stuck for two weeks in customs, and it had nothing to do with the payment platform. I had not realized how difficult is to import something from outside the EU, even for personal use.
Many (most? all?) of the payment systems I’ve used over the years can interop with Visa or Maestro. Case in point: my Bancontact cards can pay in any Belgian business even if they can’t afford the better machines that do VISA, but my card also has the VISA logo. Same in Portugal and Germany.
Also European merchants who need to accept payments from non-Europeans need to accept Visa and Mastercard.
Of course but they can support an EU standard as well. It's not mutually exclusive.
The big benefit is that all internal EU card transactions are no longer routed via US companies which is quite ridiculous.
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If you can give merchants something that costs them only 0.1% in interchange fees, you can be pretty certain they’d jump on it.
If you build it on IBAN it already works everywhere.
I've been in Portugal sometimes, and to me MB was synonymous with "we accept credit cards", and in fact it is in the sense that you can pay using Visa or Mastercard in those shops. But, is it a standalone system that doesn't require anything outside Portugal in order to work? With their own non-Visa credit cards? And can you use them when abroad in the EU, for example?
It's a standalone network. Most Portuguese cards are also VISA/Mastercard, but payment terminals may only have a contract with Multibanco, meaning only Portuguese cards are accepted. It's quite common for foreign cards not to be accepted.
Nope, it has nothing to do with credit cards, although it also accepts them.
It is majorly used for debit cards, and similar in use to the famous Minitel in France.
You can use it to load pre-pay phones, or other kinds of rechargeable services, buy tickets for public transport and various kinds of shows, pay water, electricity, taxes, among other services.
There is now an app used to pay on shops via QR codes.
You can also pay online with one time cards, that are generated for a single transaction.
Outside Portugal it is a regular debit card.
When you access Multibanco with foreign cards, you can only withdraw money usually.
I'm French and living in Portugal and I do not get the Minitel comparison. Minitel was basically a Telnet device to various services' servers.
That said, I love MB and MB Way. What an upgrade it's been over paying for stuff in the US (where I lived before moving to Portugal).
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SEPA would be a decent solution with instant QR code generation and app payments, but the transfer fees are ludicrous for daily use (~1-2€ per wire). Or maybe it's just my bank being greedy fucks as usual.
Yes. In some eastern EU countries instant SEPA payments with QR are already super popular because you don't pay fees and you don't need special terminal/gateway.
It is your bank, I don't pay for transfers.
Instant SEPA is free - see Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) — Regulation (EU) 2024/886.
Hmm does instant SEPA differ in some way from the regular kind? I just checked and my bank still lists 0.4-1.1€ per external transfer. It's the national bank so I presume they're not likely to be in breach of EU regulations.
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I never paid for SEPA transfers. Some countries are weird. I am not sure if it is still the case, but Germans had to pay a transfer fee when they used an ATM from another bank. In The Netherlands, you can use ATMs from any Dutch bank without extra cost. In fact, you can also use ATMs of German banks without additional cost. So, a having a Dutch debit card in Germany was/is(?) cheaper than a German debit card in Germany.
Huh, I thought the EU had mandated for instant SEPA transfers to be free. Maybe it’s just national. What country are you in?
Of course there is no mandate to offer anything for free. They just need to be offered for the same price as other methods.
But most people have a bank account for a fixed price and some even for free. So individual transfers are considered free, even if the correct term would be "already paid".
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SEPA gets blocked immediately when you try to buy something expensive, like a top-end graphics card (8k+).
I consider some flights already expensive enough, and have had no issues, unless I got lucky.
Show me a german webshop that supports modern payment methods. It usually old school bank transfers still.
I just bought Kampot peppers from https://www.unclespepper.com/ which is in Germany, the name notwithstanding. And yes, I paid with my Danish Visa card. No problems except that I had to adjust my ad blocker once.
You must frequent a very interesting subset of German web shops then. Yes, some do offer bank transfer (many don't because latency is just so terrible), but I've never seen credit card not on the list. Perhaps with the exception of credit card available only through some intermediary like PayPal (which I tend to prefer over direct credit card, I don't really like spreading my CC details to servers of questionable maintenance state than strictly necessary)
It is quite recent though, but the webshops do all accept credit cards, most of them even use stripe for payments.
Now, of course our corner shop appliance store still only accepts cash. It was fun to pick up cash from multiple ATMs and pay 1500€ with a pile of 20€ bills a few months ago.
Which payment method is missing from Zalando? https://en.zalando.de/ It’s a German company
I order all over Europe (including Germany) and I cannot remember the last time I did a manual bank transfer.
Yes, why did I mentioned SEPA?
It works for the purpose to pay something online.
If you want an example, Eurowings.
On the other hand, I have already seen Germans complaining about the lack of possibility to buy train tickets by bank transfer.
I have never paid anything via bank transfer, where are you buying?