This is an Austrian company that offers mobile payments with barcode/qr-code in shops in Austria and Germany, as well as in a few places in Italy and Luxembourg.
I use it since one year. It works fine, but it could definitely use more attention, so that more shops start to accept it. What are your thoughts on that?
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We’ve had a standard for this since 2013. Scan code, your bank app opens with the transfer as a template, you authorise it. Now, with SEPA instant transfers, it’s guaranteed to arrive within ten seconds. No pointless third parties involved.
I see this being useful for non-permanent shops, like a strawberry farmer with their seasonal stand, flea markets, etc, but for permanent shops POS systems are superior, whether chip+pin, rfid with card, or rfid with phone. It’s also useful for private-to-private transfers, my bank app can display the code, someone else can scan it, choose an amount, done. In the wild I’ve only seen them on paper invoices, just another (additional) way to write “please send the due funds to <bank details>”.
I just checked their website. For registration the require my bank account (understandably) AND password. That’s a no from me dawg.
The problem in Europe is exactly the fragmentation of payment systems. For most you can only use them if you are a resident and have a bank account on that country.
• Wero: Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands • MB WAY: Portugal • Twint: Switzerland • Swish: Sweden • MobilePay: Denmark, Finland • iDEAL: Netherlands • Bancontact: Belgium • BLIK: Poland • Satispay: Italy • Vipps: Norway • Giropay: Germany • Sofort: Germany • Cartes Bancaires: France - Etc....These really annoy me. I used to spend a lot of time in Sweden so I tried pretty hard to get an account set up to let me pay by swish. I gave up. If you’re not a resident you can’t get a person number so you can’t get a bank ID so you can’t use swish.
What is frustrating is that lots of places I went required swish and wouldn’t take cash or card, so I ended up having to get other people to pay for me.
I bet many other systems in other countries are similar
On one hand, I want the convenience of a unified system. On the other hand, I don’t want another monopoly with a dangerously wealthy CEO at the helm.
at least the swish system is set up as a collaboration between banks. it’s not its own entity. assuming most of the others work this way too, since transferring between banks takes so long.
Maybe a payment system that would only be responsible for EU transfers would be the solution? In addition to the established solutions.
I don’t have a great understanding of economics and business, but I think what we need ultimately is to start cooperatives that compete with the megacorps. It seems to distribute wealth more fairly, instead of weaponising wealth.
I don’t think Wero is comparable to the others, they didn’t have the scope, ambition and backing Wero and the European Payments Initiative have ? It’s limited right now but it just launched, I’m sure more banks will progressively join.
Wero is the successor of Giropay which kinda went semi-obsolete with SEPA instant transfers. The original use case was telling shops that a regular SEPA transfer was guaranteed to arrive by the bank sending that information via giropay and the actual money then using regular channels. Sofort dug deeper into that market because it’s the only business they have, while giropay is little more than a thin wrapper around banks agreeing on a particular interface. Online all you really need, today, is a way for a shop to send you over to your bank with a SEPA transfer template pre-filled with the right data. That’s not a business, it’s barely even a website.
The good news, indeed, with the EPI is that the rest of Europe is finally adopting the same standards-setting procedure that Germany had for ages because we have 1400 banks over here, most of which only serve a local customer base, they need to interoperate, insular solutions just don’t make sense or you couldn’t go to an ATM the next town over. And they do have a habit of not inventing pointless intermediaries, much less intermediaries handling actual money both sender and recipients already have bank accounts why get a third bank involved.
@professionalspooner funny I have never heard of wero in Germany 😅
TWINT offers a Prepaid Option for foreigners, and WERO is open to all banks that want to participate.
Exactly. Even the most inclusive are hard to use when compared with using the Visa/Mastercard networks which are integrated with most banks and merchants.
In Germany you have a better acceptance with Girocard (and guess that’s true for most other national systems up there too), and all the popular national systems within the European Payments Initiative will probably convert into Wero (At least that seems to be the plan).
So they will start with a big initial acceptance and cards in circulation. Usually they are cobadged with MC/Visa, so customers won’t probably even won’t notice that they will paying with Wero in Europe
How about with your phone, will that be Wero?
Yes, that will also come with QR Codes when they roll out the payment phase. Right now it’s just instant free money transfers between users via phone number
I think iDEAL and Bancontact are already/will be soon phased out/incorporated into Wero. Source (towards the bottom): https://wero-wallet.eu/news/epi-launches-wero-its-innovative-digital-payment-wallet-in-belgium
MobilePay (Denmark and Finland) and Vipps (Norway) is the same company now, and can be used between each country. Works great when I have friends visiting from Norway in Denmark.
We need a European alternative to MasterCard and Visa. Two American companies own basically the non-cash market. The digital euro can’t come soon enough
We should collect all national offerings (we have satispay In Italy) and then create a bridge among them.
Too easy? Too many high-castle heads to cut off?
https://chat.mistral.ai/chat/0ecf1bd4-40b1-476b-ba5a-a888daf6bfa1
That’s what Wero is for
Federate them and build on top of a digital euro.
1…2…3…done
Being Austrian, and especially interested in shopping national or even regional, not just European, I’m interested. But the website says the company is situated in Switzerland? Where did you get that it’s an Austrian company?
In belgium Klarna is an option that is growing more and more custom with online-payments
Klarna is probably going to implode due to mismanagement. Their CEO thinks he can replace software engineers with AI, got a rid of way too many of them and the ones that are left are overworked just trying to keep the lights on.
Oh i see, let’s hope they replace the CEO before he send the whole company down the drain
I see Klarna all the time too, online.
Switzerland already has twint and I don’t see them switching to a new system. Maybe that’s where it will lead to: multiple regional services. Not great, but also not a giant corporation.
What we really need are alternatives to US credit card systems.
It’s shit, I’ve lived in Austria for a few months last year and the only German Bank they’ve supported was N26
That’s not the case any more. I could add my german bank, which is not n26.
Ok, they seem to offer a more restricted subset in their jö&Go Partnership with REWE.
Their support is indeed a bit better, but I don’t get why they offer only a few selected Sparkasse and Volksbanks when PSD2 exists and Klarna manages to support all of them
It’s still in early access so it not working as well as the more established alternatives isn’t all that surprising. That’ll change if it manages to take off.
I think Wero will be more successful. But we’ll see. Nothing wrong with multiple European competing systems
Absolutely. We’ve seen the drawbacks of tech monopolies now.
This sounds interesting, thanks for sharing. Have now read through the page and FAQ. Is my understand correctly, that this app is only for paying in offline world, not for online purchases like e.g. PayPal?
Yes, it’s only for payments in offline shops at the moment.
Are there any Places accepting this besides the Austrian Stores of the REWE Group? I’ve only seen this at BILLA (Plus), PENNY and BIPA, and heavily pushed by them through the jö-App
The high number of Acceptance Places on the Websites seems to come from their Roaming Agreement with AliPay which is sadly even more common in Europe than Bluecode
Thank you for clarifying. It is impressive how many shops they have participating.
Don’t be fooled, it’s thanks to the AliPay-Roaming. So not very European
I hold my card in front of the scanner.
Yeah I don’t get whats it all about? Been visiting China lately and even their bums had QR codes since nobody used cash anymore. We got laughed at when we wanted to use cash. Can we please not become China? I like my cash.
