Link: https://news.sky.com/story/uk-banks-kick-off-fundraising-in-bid-to-create-new-payments-giant-13585850

The UK Payments Delivery Company will this week launch a process to raise in the region of £50m to fund the development of a new domestic infrastructure player, Sky News learns.

Britain’s biggest banks will this week embark on a process to raise tens of millions of pounds to fund the development of a new payments infrastructure vehicle that could ultimately evolve into a domestic alternative to Mastercard and Visa.

EU already rolled out Wero, and it's working fine... You sure Brexit was a good idea?

Fine-ish. My bank has integrated Wero in its banking app, which would be a good thing, but for some god forsaken reason, they want access to my phone contacts to use it at all. The only thing that works for me is paying Wero invoices.

I'd be very surprised if there was anyone on Lemmy that thought Brexit was a good idea given the apparent demographics.

If we've got any sense, we'll either adopt wero or build something compatible with it in some way

Problem is it looks like we're letting privately owned banks handle it, so it's going to probably be something that seeks to benefit businesses over consumers

I'm sorry, they're launching fundraising? For £50M? And they're banks that won't pay allegedly can't afford that price tag? Rich people suck. Capitalism is a mistake.

I’d be very surprised if there was anyone on Lemmy that thought Brexit was a good idea

Yeah, prepare to be shocked. I saw one in the wild, earlier.

I think it's fundraising within the group, they aren't running a Kickstarter or anything.

About time

There are like 5 countries using Wero. It's not and it will never be an EU wide solution, let alone cover countries outside EU.

Well, it doesn’t need to be. That’s the whole point. Instead of forcing 500 million users into a single app , EU is building the shared infrastructure on which ANY approved app can interoperate for free. And that I think is the best way to operate in the EU.

Maybe a sponsored fun-run or a raffle though?

Possibly a cake sale?

We've had a comparable system to Wero in Switzerland for about a decade (called Twint) and the conglomerate who owns it already signaled they would enable cross-payment with Wero if Wero is interested, so I wouldn't rule out that it grows beyond the EU. Nothing concrete has been agreed so far, though, at least not publicly.

EuroPA (European Payment Alliance) agreed to cooperate with Wero last year. EuroPA represents Portugal, Spain, Poland, Italy, Hungary, Nordic countries and I think Romania. None of those countries will adapt Wero, they will work to make their systems compatible. Systems from outside EU can also be compatible with Wero but it's clear that other countries are not interested in implementing it directly.

EU is building the shared infrastructure on which ANY approved app can interoperate for free

Is it? What infrastructure is that? AFAIK current solution are developed by private banks. EU is working on digital Euro but it's independent from other payment methods.

They could add a few more with England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland....

Cash still exists...

Wero is controlled by French and German banks. Other countries don't want to get involved. They prefer to build solutions they can control themselves.

And gets sold to a US firm 5 years later.