“It didn’t go unnoticed in Frankfurt that Visa and Mastercard suspended operations in Russia in March 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine……Thirteen of the 20 countries in the euro have no domestic card scheme. You use an international operator, or you pay in cash.”
It hasn’t gone unnoticed that the US is threatening to invade an EU country’s (Denmark) territory, either. Would a future President Trump or President Vance threaten to shut down European financial infrastructure if it opposes an annexation of Greenland? Who knows, but better to take away that opportunity for leverage.
The plan is that you can link it to your bank account or open a special account at post offices throughout the EU. There will be phone apps for payments and digital Euro debit cards. Visa/Mastercard & Apple/Google Pay typically charge 3% fees; the digital Euro will have none. That will ensure it is speedily adopted by retailers and quickly supplants the US providers. Also worth noting its technology will be 100% European only, leaving zero vulnerability/leverage to non-Europeans.
GNU taler has been working on this, I guess someone just needs to adopt it. https://www.taler.net/en/index.html
King shit. Wish our leaders gave anywhere near a shit to do this in the US.
We need this for Canada too.
That was my first thought. I like every part of the article except the “European only” bit
You are welxome in the EU! Unless US annexes you first…
Canada is supposedly in talks with the EU for some kind of association so we might lust get it too
Anything thay weaken visa mastercard is good.
Wow, very cool! Absolute poggers.
“It’s an end-to-European solution,” says Alessandro Giovannini, an ECB official. “All the engineering will be 100pc European, and it will be distributed by euro banks.”
Hmm, I should open a European bank account. It could help if I’m every visiting family out there, anyway.
Revolut should work, ask around friends because they give about 80$ bonus if you sign up via referral (to the person you referred, after 3 payments IIRC, but they can send half to you, or all of it).
The world is changing incredibly fast. Change is scary but I’m loving the speed and intelligence the world’s leaders are adapting to the US threats.
I hope Americans are allowed to use it. I want to support hentai and to enjoy it without prudes getting in the way.
It comes to America
A bunch of Americans start using it
The provider sees a growing market and likes money.
Some pastor from Iowa sees tits on the Internet and gets offended.
Religious network of nutnobs pays for boycott ad campaign.
Provider silently or not so silently bans everything that can possibly offend christian pastors from the US.
We still need a sane payment providerBoycotting a service that has no fees doesn’t do much.
It reminds me of when I worked in a call center. Asshole, screaming callers would demand to speak to someone else and expect me to be somehow upset that I got to get them off my line.
They still benefit from having volumes of money flowing through them, or at least can bendfit if we allow them to be a for profit business.
right? like oh you don’t want to use this service that only costs us money? so sad… NEXT!
The technology is based on the existing Ideal system, which is already in use by the Netherlands. It works via apps from the banks themselves. Hence, you will need an account at an European bank.
Balls, guess Canada is stuck using the imperial processors. I’d have loved to use a European government system
You’re confusing Wero with the Digital Euro. This article is about the latter.
This is excellent. We should never have left the EU.
This article claims there are very initial signs that you might get your wish: https://inews.co.uk/opinion/process-trying-undo-brexit-begun-4106581
I personally can’t get over the fact that a 50% majority was all that was needed for such a drastic change. The US despite all its flaws requires more than 50% for certain major things like amending the constitution. Hopefully you can one day rejoin and then make it so it would require a higher threshold like 2/3 majority before another brexit would be possible.
Thank you.
The UK has more of a set of conventions and principles than a constitution. We found out how weak that is when Boris Johnson broke the rules of Parliament to avoid losing a vote on Brexit, and made the Queen lie about it publicly in the formal announcement of the proroguement.
One of the principles is that no Parliament can bind its successor. For example, there was a fixed term parliaments law from 2010 or so that said that you need a two thirds majority to call an election before five years is up (rather than at whatever time suits the incumbent prime minister); when a new Parliament was elected in 2015, one of the first things they did was rescind that law, with a simple majority.
I worry that Farage, friend to trump and follower of Bannon, will become prime minister and lead us to such destruction that we will write an actual constitution, but that didn’t do America any good once the supreme court was stuffed with Republicans loyal to trump.
I think the trick is to not elect tyrants, but Putin’s propaganda reaches worldwide and the far right is rising everywhere. Perhaps it really will be global thermonuclear war this time.
I never understood why countries allowed digital payments like this. It effectively is like giving up monetary soverenty. Of course later I realized its because debt has been used for currency creation now.
Pix neles
Suddenly caralho
We’ve been hearing about the Digital Euro for years. Is it finally happening?
Trump really is the great unifyer, goddamn
Sorry to be an ass and english is a weird language but it’s spelled as unifier, unify doesn’t become unifyer. Why? Because it’s a piece of shit language that’s why.
Unifyer: Portmanteau of Groyper and Unifier. Invented at the end of 2025 CE, it came to represent the abhorrent character of Fascist leaders like Donald Trump uniting opposing political powers that would normally bicker.
- The Devil’s Dictionary, the most honest provider of words among the literary arts.
I like that. It should be a thing.
I’ll be the enlightened centrist here: yes, let’s all try to spell words correctly, and no, do not unpromptedly correct other people’s spelling if you understood what they meant
if you understood what i was trying to communicate it was spelled correctly
Soo juu dunt tink deres a wright or rong whey too spel wrods?
nope
Question: true or false?
Answer: yes
👍
Question: you don’t believe in the flying spaghetti monster or that the moon landings were faked?
Perfectly acceptable answer grammatically: No.
That’s not how spelling works.
Y u mad tho
Eh, it pretty much is. Language is fluid and constantly changing, there isn’t really anything “right” or “wrong”. What’s “correct” in a language is essentially what people speak and write
Sure, you have dictionaries and grammar rules and such, but they’re not prescriptive, they’re descriptive
Soo juu dunt tink deres a wright or rong whey too spel wrods?
Depends on your definition, but so long as it’s understandable, yeah
I mean, what are dialects, for example?
there isn’t really anything “right” or “wrong”.
I’m familiar with the argument but I disagree with it. Every person learning a language disagrees with it. And every instructor I’ve had disagrees with it. The only people who seem to agree are the same people who misuse the language.
That’s a very strong use of “every”. English isn’t my primarily language either, you know
And no, in fact, I’ve heard most people who have a degree en english, linguistics, whatever, to disagree with your position. Language is how it’s used, not what it’s supposed to be. Otherwise we would always have had one singular language, forever, and no dialects either
Do you always use literally literally, and are you careful not to talk about the enormity of perfectly innocent large things?
Language changes. People make mistakes. Neither is worth getting too upset about.
unless your a silly frenchmen, trying to impose order upon chaos
Can’t resist correcting “you’re”! Sorry sorry sorry.
The US-based financial sector fights it tooth-and-claw at every opportunity. I suspect this kind of legislation is an absolute cash-cow for lobbyists across the continent, in the same way the PPACA made a bunch of influential DC firms incredibly rich.
But can the ECB actually deliver on a useful and efficient method of continent-wide banking in practice? Fingers crossed, I guess. I just wouldn’t hold my breath.
there’s a bunch of FOSS work happening. i believe GNU Taler is specifically this. it’s being funded by the EU
I hope it sees full implementation
and then wide scale adoption across the globe
I’ve noticed a few retailers in Canada charging more for credit cards - debit, cash and cheque are all no extra fee’s. The only reason I have a credit card is for the rewards and the necessity for things like hotels and car rentals.
If society could work in our favor and not try to force easy credit on us then we would all be better off.
The CC merchant agreements used to prohibit charging the customer for the charges.
Friend of mine that worked at a bank had a furniture store try to do that, she got hold of some muckity-muck at the CC company while the salesperson watched (after warning them that this wasn’t how any of that worked), the furniture store had their credit card machines suspended before she left the building. There was copious wailing and gnashing of teeth that she watched with a smile. She refused their offers of a heavy discount to make a phone call again and walked out.
They removed that part a couple years ago from many of the merchant agreements.
If everyone wasn’t trying to screw everyone else we’d be better off.
Visa/Mastercard & Apple/Google Pay typically charge 3% fees
Not in the EU. Visa and Mastercard have been capped to 0.5% for years.
Apple / Google pay take a small cut from the 0.5%
Diversity in payment methods would be no bad thing though. It’s amazing how Visa/Mastercard have managed to insert themselves into almost ever transaction, particularly since contactless became so prevalent.
Aren’t there some other fees? Some smaller shops even outright ask if you don’t have cash instead.
I am completely uninformed on card payment fees but l imagine some if this is because it’s easier to underreport cash revenue to tax authorities
The merchant will often take a larger amount. For example Square charge 1.75% fees.
The 0.5% is the bit that goes to Mastercard/Visa iirc.
It’s never an enormous amount, and if they don’t have to let Mr Tax Man know then some small businesses won’t.
I just bought something from a German online shop. I paid with a direct bank-to-bank transfer, zero fees (as far as I know).
The only problem of course is that this method of payment doesn’t have any kind of insurance against fraud, so it works only with already reputable stores. And of course it’s usable only in online shops.
For the love of dog, do not do this with Alibaba sellers if they ask you to. I’ve never gotten bit but I’ve heard horror stories.
Not a problem as I would never buy anything from Alibaba or Temu or any such place.
The potential for data breach there is much worse than credit/debit, you can’t just get a new account number like you can a card if it’s breached. You have to close your account or put it on total lockdown.
Payment by bank transfers doesn’t at all work like credit card payments since you don’t give them some kind of information which they can then use to get the money from you.
Instead THEY give you their bank details and you order your bank to transfer money to their account (a process made ever more easy over time and pretty straightforward now with smartphone bank apps which can read QR codes with their bank info).
At most they might get the number of the account the money was transferred from and no further information about it, the kind of information that, if leaked, is pretty much useless (can’t be used to get info on who owns that account or how much money is there, much less to get money out from that account).
Maybe some countries have really bad security and secrecy laws around bank accounts, but in those countries in Europe I lived in, the only one where that is maybe the case is Britain, whilst in the rest knowing somebody’s bank account number is useless.
The really risky stuff is Debit Cards which are directly linked to your bank account (for example VISA Electron) as those have none of the protections of Credit Cards and do have card data which can be used for distance purchases and hence if leaked would allow access to your accounts. Electronic bank transfers are something completely different from this.
As I understand it, and in the US at least, debit card protections have caught up with credit cards.
This is mostly true, with the caveat that the money is still missing from your bank account until customer service agrees with you about the fraud and issues you a refund, vs. a credit card where the money is missing from the card issuer’s bank account instead.
you can’t just get a new account number
Why not? Close the account, open another one
Yeah let me quickly inform my employer, mortgage issuer, and all the bills to quickly take/give money to another account like it wouldn’t take days to get to them
I’m not sure I understand what the risk in sharing ones bank account number is. You need to share it anyway to receive payments, and at least in my nook of Europe all online bank transfers are verified by two factor authentication.
That’s about as good as e-mail address. Bank account number is somewhere you can send to.
Maybe, though I am not sure, someone could create a request for Direct Debit payment, but without authorization that’s all it is, “please give money”.
Ah man, I was kind of excited until it said European-only.
I thought maybe I’d be able to build a till from scratch without purchasing a software suite from IBM written in the 80s.
Right now the best I can do is accept Crypto on such a machine.
I mean, you absolutely could make a till but you still have to hook it up to a payment provider like Adyen, Stripe or a terminal that handles the payment.
I mean, it’s gonna ultimately have to work everywhere
People don’t like having cards they can’t use when they travel
It’s not gonna happen right away, but I don’t see how it doesn’t end up that way
Edit: although reading more it might not be equivalent to the existing kinds of cards as it seems to be a debit only provision (i.e. potentially lacking a lot of the protection you get from using a credit card as your main purchasing card). Will be interesting to see how this evolves
A lot of people don’t even own credit cards here, so that isn’t really a massive problem.
A credit card that only works domestically is not a deal breaker. Most of the time, people don’t travel abroad. So, using a more advantageous card (more perks, less fees, etc.) domestically makes sense.
Domestic providers are a thing in several countries which are smaller than EU. Some of them don’t operate internationally so this news isn’t that weird
What makes you think this card will actually have more perks or that anybody but merchants get anything here? I get roughly 3-4% in rewards, a $100 travel voucher every year, free dash pass and Lyft memberships. My perks might not be for everyone but there are a ton of good cards out there and this seems to offer the end user few reasons to care.
Are you in the EU? My understanding is that those rewards are not available in the EU due to their much lower transaction fees. Admittedly, I’m not in the EU, so this is second hand knowledge.
No, of that’s the case then it’s less of a difference.
For what it’s worth, the rewards they give are taken from merchants commissions. It might be great for the cc owner, but it’s not very fair
Yes I understand. But fairness rarely changes consumers behavior.
It’s a public service for people in the EU and businesses operating in the EU paid for by EU taxpayers. So I doubt it will be rolled out outside of the EU. It still cost money to operate the service eventhough it is provided for free. If it ever gets to work outside the EU it will probably only be for people that have EU residency. No way they want to subsidize the transactions for people from outside of the EU with EU tax money.
If it works and grows, the service could be SOLD to foreign entities
It’s DoA unless the EU mandates or coerces end users. There is absolutely zero incentive for anyone but the merchants as far as I can tell.
No fees is a great incentive
For merchants.
Yeah, for the merchants. If you were about to pay for €200 of groceries and had this card and a Visa card that gave 3% back, which would you choose to use.
So merchants counter by the EU card getting a 4% discount over credit just like many do these days for cash. It’s easy to beat the rewards rate.
Some people have preferences based on morality and values rather than a pittance of insultingly low rewards.
Yep, with you there but people are people. They will see those rewards and go for it. It is the same reason why the JC Penny campaign to remove flashy sales and discounts and just price items lower failed.
Merchants and banks, and you bank may very well incentivise you
Ironically it’s EU rules that prevent merchants passing card fees onto customers
