(I don’t know if this community allows such rants or if there are other communities better suited for it. Please let me know!)
So, I wanted to replace PayPal with a service that’s not owned by an American megacorp. Last year, Wero (wero-wallet.eu) launched with much media attention as a self-proclaimed competitor to PayPal owned and operated by European banks. I love the idea!
Now here’s the issue: I can’t use it. My bank (DKB in Germany) isn’t a part of the European Payments Initiative, so I can’t use the service. And so are many other banks across Europe.
I understand that the owning banks want to have a competitive advantage over one another, but what really bothers me is that a system intended to compete with PayPal isn’t even designed to seriously compete. With PayPal, I can just link any bank account from any bank using my IBAN, but Wero doesn’t support this. This is one of the reasons why Giropay (or Kwitt) in Germany didn’t really catch on – it is too complex and too inaccessible for most potential users.
Not only does it actively keep me and many other Europeans from using Wero, it will also never become a global competitor to PayPal (that could generate additional income for the owning banks), because no non-European bank will likely ever be part of the EPI.
I would love to see a European service capable of seriously competing with American megacorps on a global level. But in my opinion, Wero just ain’t one of them.
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The main issue I see with Wero is that it offers very little benefit and has pretty much the same privacy issues like paypal or credit cards.
In addition many (smaller) EU countries already have better local solutions in place for some years.
For me to consider such a system it would need to have substancial privacy benefits over existing solutions, and there pretty much only GNU Taler qualifies.
I hope we someday get some proper payment solution like GNU Taler
Seems the GLS Bank is at itSo GNU-Taler is getting some recognition ? Oh this is great
There is a 5 million Euro support program by the EU right now. Not much and things are moving slowly, but at least there is a small hope that Taler will see some uptake later this year.
I think it’s still a very academic project. It’ll take some time. But I really don’t get why banks leave large parts of their market to third parties. I mean all the transactions which are handled by Stripe, PayPal… or Apple and Google Pay at the supermarket… I think most purchases I do either online or with my bank card, generate some transaction fees which go to some large payment provider. That’s all money banks could earn themselves?! And I suppose they like money, so I really don’t get why they leave that to someone else.
Wero relies on instant bank transfers which are not supported by DKB yet but will be mandatory later this year. I am pretty sure DKB will start supporting wero at that point. Wero itself is not feature complete yet though so it will be a few more years until it can replace PayPal and credit cards.
From 09.10.2025 on, you can send money from one account to any other in Europe in an instant and without additional costs. My bank and many other already offer this insta payment-upgrade. I hope we don’t need any other additional service by then.
Getting people to use anything but PayPal is already a challenge, as they are not used to working with their IBANs.That is exactly the system wero is using. A wero transfer IS an instant bank transfer in the background
An alternative was Paydirekt (Giropay) supported by my German bank. But while it worked quite fine, there where only very few supported sites (shops), for international payment it was more or less useless and end of last year 2024 the service has been discontinued.
It is frustrating to learn that from your experience Wero is also no good alternative for PP. Do you think there is anything we can do to persuade our banks that we want a different, better Wero? I have not so much hope for mine, but would be willing to use any serious EU bank providing a good PP alternative, which can be used worldwide.
PS: If such discussion should not be wanted in /c/europe, it could be a good fit for [email protected]
I think it‘s inherently difficult to persuade thousands of banks in Europe (and potentially worldwide) to actively join Wero, or any other service for that matter.
In my opinion, Wero – to be a viable option for anyone – should make their service something that the people can and WANT to use. Maybe I’m naive but adding the option to connect a bank account via IBAN and SEPA mandate shouldn’t be too complicated, right?
I am not from the banking business, but as this worked for PP, I would assume that such connection should easily doable for our banks, too.
PayPal charges very high transaction fees (1-3%). For credit cards they are capped due to EU Regulations at a relatively low rate. Wero is planning to introduce their own payments card, and in order to convince merchants to accept it they need to offer lower rates. That might prove difficult if they take the risk of payment failure on your side after they paid already the merchant.
By directly integrating with your bank, they are avoiding that risk.
Also the banks participating are already big in offering terminals to providers, and their customers use already their national payment cards (often cobadged with MC/Visa, but preferring the national system when possible). So they have a good position in establishing it in the Market, if they have a long enough breath. The Cheapskate Banks, with the customers looking to save every cent possible will only integrate when using these cards will make them more money, or if not having it will put them at disadvantage with the competition. (Customers not wanting to use American Systems or Acceptance of MC/Visa going down in favour of Wero (more unlikely))
Maybe there might be a prepaid solution as with TWINT in the future. But right now they just have the Send money to other user functionality so it doesn’t make sense to offer this at this point.
The Merchant Payment system is coming later
Came here to say that Switzerland somehow managed to introduce a competitor to Paypal that works flawlessly and EVERYBODY uses it. Twint is the first app I was told to install.
Portugal has a similar System (MBWay) with the interesting part that all ATMs are running the same software, so the app is optional and you can use the same features also at any ATM including things like paying your taxes or recharging you mobile phone (all carriers supported).
I get what you’re saying and agree that high transaction fees keep merchants from offering it as a payment option.
However, in my rant I’m merely talking about P2P money transfers, nothing B2C. And since most people are lazy and scrimpers, a service needs to have a very good offer for people to start using it. That’s where Wero could improve, in my opinion.
Plus, having a large user base would help them in the long run with convincing merchants to offer Wero as a payment option, wouldn’t it?
Same.
Already reached out to them anf told them not being ready and aware of #buyFromEU could be a missed chance.
Honestly - I just use bank transfer for many things. It massively simplifies financial stuff anyway (no need to compare both transaction lists to determine how much is yet to be debited, as paypal is delayed). The problem is that it requires people to know your IBAN, and they could therefore make a direct debit to that account.
There are some initiatives to allow routing transfers with aliases like email address or phone number, but unfortunately they are fragmented and depend on banks joining the initiatives.
Isn’t that money laundering?
Why would it be? The banks and consequently the tax offices know who owns the accounts.
Or you could make an extra sub-account (yes, costs like 10€/year, but oh well), which can’t use direct debit. Or the other way around, an account specifically for direct debit.
I think you are to pessimistic about wero. just give it time. The reason why here in the netherlands paypal, mastercard and visa are not a significant factor in the dutch online payments is because we have a payment system called ideal ( initiated by the main dutch banks and open to any bank wanting to support it), since 6 months wero is the owner of ideal and and without a dount wero will replace ideal in future but only if it is functional equivalent.
Well then switch Banks to one that supports it. DKB is a bank for cheapskates and looks to save money where they can (like integrating with EPI). There are other free Bank Accounts with banks that are part of the EPI.
I understand that the owning banks want to have a competitive advantage over one another
Yeah that’s bullshit. Nobody is keeping DKB out, they don’t want to integrate. It’s the same thing with them pushing their American credit cards over the German Girocard System, because they earn them more money.
What’s your opinion on UPI ? (It’s not from EU but India) they might make it available to EU
Any opinions about Klarna? I was thinking about switching to them. Have only read they’re Swedish.
Please don’t. AFAIK Klarna only exists to sell user data and tempt their user base to go into debt via their credit system.
