I don't understand how this is an issue. In France there exists CB and as far as I understand other EU countries have got their own equivalent national Visa/MasterCard competitor... Why do some countries not have their own ? Why can't they just enter in an agreement to use this ? Why do people always comment about this app or this other app.
this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2025
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Not European, but here's a structure that I think would be best (for all currencies, European or not).
Central bank creates a nationalised corporation "National payments processor". Loans out money to NPP to create a copyleft MasterCard competitor.
NPP's objectives are to reduce interchange fees, establish sovereignty in this space while keeping transactions secure.
Now, from what I understand, a retailer cannot charge different rates for different payment processors. Meaning, if I am a retailer, I can't charge more to customers who pay using Amex (who have high interchange fees) compared to those who pay using visa/MasterCard (lower fees).
Meaning, if NPP keeps interchange fees low, the benefit would be passed on to retailers directly. Consumers would see 0 benefit. If consumers see 0 benefit, no one's going to pay using NPP. This is the case with interac in Canada. Interac payments are better for retailers. But I see 0 cashbacks through my interac card. Why should I not use my visa credit card instead that gives me better cashbacks?
Therefore, here's what NPP does: it charges marginally less interchange fees compared to visa Mastercard, WHILE passing most of the fees charged to the retailer directly to the consumer as direct cashback.
Consumer adoption happens because of better cashbacks, retailer adoption happens because there are people willing to pay using an NPP card (and also the sliiiightly less interchange fees).
Now, to the organisational structure of NPP. State owned corps are prone to corruption. Accountability structures are top down. If I, the taxpayer owner of NPP am seeing corruption in NPP, I have to threaten my MP with my vote, who has to threaten the PM with their vote, who then has to threaten the finance minister with their job, who then has to threaten the head of the central bank with their job, who then has to threaten the ceo of NPP with their job.
Instead, while the state maintains equity over NPP, the operations of NPP are controlled by a state started consumer cooperative, where member owners are those who own an NPP card. This way, accountability structures are much more direct. The inefficiencies of state owned corps are severely reduced while maintaining the benefits.
Japan started JCB in 1961.
at least we have Wirecard
Funny how when Visa and MasterCard cut off cross-border payments in Russia โ by their own initiative, without any laws forcing them to do that โ Westerners all cheered. Then three years later it finally hit them as to what that means.
Meanwhile Russia was building their own payment system since 2014, and it was already working nationwide before '22, so people just got a new card if they wanted, and the system currently dominates the country's market.
Eliminate the need for central banking altogether, buy and sell in Bitcoin
BTC is highly inefficient.
Central banks are good, as they can manipulate interest rates to avoid recessions. This is not possible with BTC.
The USD was tied to gold during the great depression. This fact was one of the biggest reasons why the depression lasted so long. Had the USD not been tied to gold, the depression would have been much shorter.
If BTC becomes the primary method of transaction, be prepared for recessions to be as devastating.
We need digital euro. There are advances, but it's still going too slow.
Yup. This is the solution to US control of cashless transactions. The sooner the digital euro can be agreed upon, standardized and rolled out at the EU level, the better.
As a Romanian in a country still outside the Eurozone, I hope there's provisions to allow us to use it for RON transactions while our economy is still too much of a mess to join.
Doesn't this open up privacy issues?
Yes. They compare it to cash, but the FAQ specifies
[Payment Service Providers] would be able to identify users for the purpose of compliance with anti-money laundering rules.
Better systems include blinded signatures and ring signatures.
The amount of times I had my rent/bills bounce because my bank got frozen from anti money laundering AI bullshit that flags every single thing. God forbid you can afford to pay a friend's car insurance
Just copy Pix and be done with it.
What about Bizum? Revolut?
Don't know those.
We need an open platform for payments, not just another centralized solution.
I think the biggest issue with this is that payment systems require a certain level of trust, that's hard to achieve in a decentralized system.
Good point. Trusted by who? Let's say a business has an open payment system and you are buying something from them using whatever money provider you use. What do they care if transaction is successful and money has been wired to them? Also we have certificates and what not, business could act like browsers - trust valid certificates and not trust invalid ones or do as they please. Of course the question here is who provides certificate validity - there could be more providers. I didn't really think deeply into it, but we should be free to not be under one or the other master that can and will bully and extort us.
we should be free to not be under one or the other master that can and will bully and extort us.
I think that ship may have sailed for humankind since centuries back. ๐
Sadly, you might be right. But one can still dream, right.
I'm with you. I feel like that's what I'm doing every day while wide awake.
Not the kind of world I wanted to raise my kids in, I tell you that much.
How decentralized does it need to be? Is a central issuer (like GNU Taler) acceptable?
As long as transaction is completed, why not? But it shouldn't be limited to one issuer.
It exists, it is called Wero. Check with your European bank if they support it. Many do.
Haven't seen any shops supporting no Wero though, whereas you can visa and MasterCard in virtually any shop in the world.
A LOT of catching up to do, before it could actually be used realistically by people. Maybe banks can use it internally.
It hasn't been rolled out to brick and mortar yet. This is planned in Q4 2026. ( And yes: they have planned much lower fees than visa/MasterCard and simpler P.O.S setups where existing hardware could be used).
The EPI (European Payment Initiative , a grouping of 16 European banks and financial institutions) is deliberately doing a slow launch though the tech behind it is all set up.
They don't want to F-up with people's money.
Fair point, however, it is happening. They already outline the payment process and it seems simple enough to implement, at least for payment by smartphone.
Scan QR code with your banking app, confirm payment, done.
The scanning of the QR code is unfortunately a bigger issue than one can imagine. Takes slightly longer and is slightly more complicated than just blipping your credit card. Enough so to dissuade most people to use it.
With the credit cards, you still need to get android wallet, Apple pay, authenticate, do the NFC dance...
Many European countries already have local parallel systems already for pin and chip cards, Visa/MasterCard is already a secondary system if the card is used within the country's border despite the huge logos.
It exists, it is called GNU Taler
I see Taler brought up, and it always intrigues me.
What is the current state of it? With the app it looks like I can add a bank potentially but there are no payment service providers populated.
Does it currently function in a way I could transfer money between myself and a friend?
Here is another readme about the state: https://www.taler.net/en/ngi-taler.html
Some banks, mainly cooperative banks, already work with it. But it's again one of those systems that doesn't make them money, so I suspect it will die a slow death.
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GNU Taler is developed as part of the GNU project for the GNU Operating System
the GNU Operating System
Lol
I missed the joke here
Does anyone.. actually.. use it? I installed it some time ago and got stuck at not knowing what to do next
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Wero is not widely supported yet, it's not even finished yet, it doesn't have feature parity with existing solutions. Compared to its predecessor, Giropay, it's also rather intransparent, in a "just trust our app, bro" kind of way, with little in the way of open standards.
It needs support from every single bank to work (in stark contrast to PayPal, btw), and that support requires quite a lot of development and maintenance effort on the part of the bank. Parent poster (BarHocker) said many European banks already support it, but the practical reality is most of them don't, and largely didn't have any plans to, either. The number of supporting banks is artificially inflated by the fact that the German Volksbanken/Raiffeisenbanken and the Sparkassen, respectively are technically hundreds of small regional banks.
This requirement to have direct support from the individual banks is, the way I see it, the main reason why Giropay failed. If Wero has the exact same problem, I don't see why it would succeed where Giropay did not.
I do still hope for it, though.
I'm afraid you're wrong. We've had something very similar to Wero in Sweden since 2012 - it's called Swish. It helps, but it unfortunately doesn't get rid of the need for visa and mastercard.
Wero has a specific functionality. He is not talking necessarily about consumer-facing systems here. For european banks there are other systems and infrastructure that need to be thought about.
@DreasNil all IT infrastructure
is too dependent on the US. Good that people are waking up to some degree
I completely agree!
Source? You only linked an image
It is reported in several Swedish news outlet, but the original source was an interview on a public service radio channel that was aired this morning: https://www.sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/riksbankschef-erik-thedeen-att-skapa-europeiska-betalsystem-ar-viktigt-pa-grund-av-den-geopolitiska-situationen
Oopsie, sorry about that. The link apparently disappeared when I added the picture. I changed it back again.
I thought that there was already an EU payment system in the pipeline, due to roll out completely in 2026? Or did I make that up.... ๐ค
EDIT - Wero - https://sbs-software.com/insights/wero-europe-payment-race/
And it is tied to a single bank account and can only be used by the app where the account is from. And only on mobile. And most banks want you to use your phone number for it. No thanks.
Yeah, great start!
Digital euro, but it's postponed for a year or something like that.
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