It's been underway for a while, EPI - European Payments Initiative.
Hopefully I'll be able to rid myself of my mastercard sometime next year and just rely on Vipps/Wero. Next year is where they roll out point-of-sale across most of Europe.

Norway already has BankAxept, which works pretty good. Tæpping with Vipps is a great alternative to Apple/Google/Garmin Pay as well.

Can Americans use it? I want tod itch the Christian censored visa and MasterCard

Americans should support trade unions and cooperatives.

Norway is very lucky.

If it relies exclusively on smart phones they can fuck off, they changing one overlord for another one from the same place, except this one is even shittier.

Stop digital ids and age verification.

Are you in Norway? Every Visa and Mastercard issued by Norwegian banks should have BankAxept too. So every time you use contactless it’s BankAxept and if your bank allows Tæpping in Vipps you can use it on your phone too.

Wero is based on SEPA, the Single Euro Payments Area, which only covers countries in Europe. In order to use Wero, your bank (in a SEPA country) has to explicitly support it (not all of them do; I have checking accounts with 3 banks and only one of them has announced plans to support it). And to use it when shopping, the merchant also has to support it.

Apparently there are plans to link European and Canadian payment systems. But no way the US will do this.

MBWay works great in Portugal

Unfortunately I'm not in Norway, but Denmark. Closest thing we have here is Dankort, but that's tied to Visa for now, which ain't ideal.

Funny they found a way to fit Axe into payment system

I thought it was independent, but just falls back to Visa or MasterCard whenever Dankort is not supported? Which is, of course, everywhere outside of Denmark...

Sadly Vipps recently stopped working on degoogled android. :/

Norwegians and others affected by this should feel free to complain to them about that.

Seems like it's Wero again. Which is American-approved smartphone exclusive.

I don't see it as a replacement for Visa/Mastercard, only possibly Google/Apple pay and things like PayPal.

Unfortunately it's actually not even a replacement for either of those, only for Google/Apple pay realistically, since you'll need to use a smartphone like with those. Either an iPhone, or a google-approved Android phone. So no luck I'm afraid.

It's becoming increasingly bizarre to me that virtually all journalists will absolutely refuse to mention Google Play and iOS exclusivity. Has anyone figured out why that is?

Yeah, but will they judge what I buy with it?

Always wondered how Vipps’ feature set is in Denmark compared to Norway. Does it allow for contactless payment?

I actually thought the whole contactless pay in Vipps came from the Danish equivalent when they merged.

I think contactless in Vipps is from a cooperation with BankAccept, which makes sense as both of these services are backed by Norwegian banks.

I'm not aware of contactless payment in MobilePay, and I wouldn't expect it over night when it changes to Vipps as it would require Dankort support. Probably their priority is to support the European payment system so that it can work across borders effortlessly.

Right now, contactless payment using Norwegian Vipps wouldn't work in Denmark because BankAccept doesn't work there. At least I'm fairly sure of this - as I said Vipps has stopped working on my phone. 🙃

The US will absolutely panic once this starts to spread.

They will have no control, and no eyes on what Europe does with its money.

Power to the EU.

No doubt they are lobbying hard to bring this to the attention of Jabba the Trump.

Now UK has to step up and join

Having lived in several countries in Europe, I can tell you the entire Multibanco system in Portugal (on top of which MBWay is one of the products) is far more complete and has been in place for far longer than anything I've seen elsewhere.

Most countries have far more basic systems (for example, you can check your bank account movements and pay your bills in Portuguese ATMs, but not usually in other countries) and some countries in Europe (such as Britain) don't even have their own payment and ATM system and rely on VISA and/or Mastercard.

Then again the entire Multibanco infrastructure was setup by the government forcing banks to come together, agree on a standard for digital transfers and payments and to setup and pay for a company that does it (called SIBS), so of course all this happened way back in the 80s and wouldn't happen under more recent, neoliberal, governments.

The EU digital currency act is fully private and backed by the EU. They won’t be able to see what you buy so you can buy as many embarrassing things as you’d like :3

Wero again? It's a German and French solution, it will never spread to the rest of Europe. Digital Euro is a solution developed by EU.

Why do you prefer Digital Euro?

Trump and data brokers will lash out if people just simply used cash.

nah, all the US government has to do is ask Apple and Google to delist the wero app and it'll be cooked

digital sovereignty and mandatory locked down rectangles are fundamentally incompatible

I didn't say I prefer it. I said that digital Euro is a solution backed by EU. Wero is backed by French and German private banks. There are about 10 solution like Wero currently in EU, all backed by banks from different countries, and Wero is not going to replace any of them.

That won't fly. The EU is a massive market for Apple and Google they won't want to lose.

But hey, I'd love those monopolies to burn too, so be great to see the problem of them highlighted like that.

Digital sovereignty is suddenly a hot topic.

Advocating for an idea shows that you prefer it.

It's in Belgium and the Netherlands already what are you talking about

Brazil and India already have their own systems which are up and running.

Just wait until you read about Pasmo and similar. I like Pasmo a lot. You can top up a card use it for transportation, convenience stores, grocery stores, eating out, vending machines, the arcade >_>, etc. It's like a bus pass that you can use in a pinch. And the security is actually not too bad. It's like a different approach, you need to pay your fare for a train but you can get lunch and beer with it as well (for your ride lol). No need to go to a bank, there's terminals at every station. I mean you'll be SOL in the countryside.

Yes, it's also in Belgium and Netherlands. That's it. Read about EPI and EuroPA. It was said so many times here already... People who think Wero is going to expand to other countries are simply uninformed.

Stating facts about something is not advocating for it. If I say "Poland used PLN, not Euro", am I advocating for PLN?

That's the current state of the rollout. Wero is poised to expand to the rest of Europe as well. Source: my job.

Wero is more like an alternative to Paypal. The Digital Euro is more akin to replacing VISA/Mastercard.

In Massachusetts, we have the Charlie Card system which is the T. A. P. Pass and our system just got updates to read tap credit cards and tapping your phones.

Given how unsecure the MBTA is, having this would be a shit show for those who don't get one issued specifically for themselves.

The Charlie Cards can mainly be found every morning on top of the machines because they're free for most people to get and use (free to use means you're free to use the cards if you please, the trains still have fares, lol) and if you're done with one that's not personally issued to you, it's preferred you leave it on top of a machine on a station so someone else can use it.

....... It would have to get rid of public cards and you'd have to make it so that if you want a card you'd have to register for one, which would mean less accessibility for commuters.

Interesting. What about this then?

My understanding is that other countries have implemented different solution long time ago (Bizum, Blik and so on) and will not implement Wero. They agreed to integrate with Wero, meaning that Wero users will be able to send money to Bizum/Blik/other users but banks from other countries will not introduce Wero. Where are you getting your info from that they will? Any public sources about it?

We’re calling it Super Money.

Stopped working for me this year too in Finland, same app with a different name. Hate it.

For a lot of student events here it's the only way to pay because it's do convenient to set up and everyone has it.

what is the alternative for sending digital money fast and easy?

Yeah, I was shocked to learn how dependant EU was on American technology.

I think it boils down to national pride. Both Brazil and India took pride in making their own payments system. Eu was pretty chill until uncle Donny came.

It's like, don't try to fix what's not broken, and Trump broke it. Though honestly, they should have started earlier, I think as early as Trump's first term.

A website?

I used it in Italy this year and in Denmark last year actually. To my understanding it goes through the Visa/Mastercard systems instead of BankAxept on terminals that doesn’t have it.

Another card instead of an app that requires google's blessing and supervision.

They want to challenge visa and mastercard by droping their trousers and bending over for google.

We're calling it Super Money And John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Wero is part of the EPI (European Payments Initiative). It's going to be a network of all the digital payment apps, so you can use your own app all across Europe.

The problem is that the Italian member is Bancomat, which literally nobody uses (Bancomat is a big company, but they issue debit cards; nobody uses their digital payments service).

In Italy, the most used app is Satispay (which is very similar to Swedish Swish, Danish MobilePay, etc.). So I can't see this initiative taking traction in Italy at the moment.

I'm Italian and we have something similar do Dankort, called Bancomat. The problem is that Bancomat too is always tied to MasterCard/Visa.

and you would use a website with what? a laptop that doesnt fit in your pocket? no thx