[computomatic]

Most, if not all countries have their own domestic payment systems. This is about cross-border payments within the EU.

“Breakup” seems a bit exaggerated considering the % of payment volume which might switch to the new system.

[pimterry]

> “Breakup” seems a bit exaggerated considering the % of payment volume which might switch to the new system.

Brazil introduced Pix in 2019, it's now the most used payment method for all transactions nationwide, ahead of both cards & cash.

India introduced UPI in 2016, it now handles >80% of digital payments there, and handles more transactions a day than Visa does worldwide.

It's totally plausible to me that a similar replacement could overtake cards completely within a decade. The lack of cross-border support means "Pay with Bizum" is a niche feature that's only useful in Spain, but if "Pay with Wero" becomes an instant & ~free payment method that works for hundreds of millions of users then it's a very different ballgame.

[cyberrock]

And also much of East and Southeast Asia as well: AliPay (CN), Kakao (KR), PayPay (JP), JKO (TW), GrabPay (SG/MY), QRIS (ID), etc. with various interop compatibility between them. If you build it they will come.

[carlosjobim]

> Brazil introduced Pix in 2019, it's now the most used payment method for all transactions nationwide, ahead of both cards & cash.

Is that by volume of transactions or total amount, or both?

Cash transactions can of course only be estimated for this statement.

[Anonyneko]

Russia switched 100% of its payments seamlessly, no reason for the EU not to do the same. Build up the network and tell banks to use that network even for transactions initiated with Visa/MC cards. At that point cards are still usable, but effectively a piece of identification plastic not directly controlled by Visa/MC anymore.

[enaaem]

Italy has a similar size economy as Russia and they also have their own payment network. Technically there is nothing special. Countries have to come together and decide on a solution together.

On the other hand, if you step back a little bit, Russia is currently stuck in a Sovjet civil war, so I don’t think the Kremlin way is that great.

[anticodon]

Russia had roughly ten years to prepare. First talks about building national payment system started around 2010-2012. And it was meeting notable opposition: "why should we care? MC/Visa are good enough, why spend money on national infrastructure".

But yeah, it is amazing that in 2022 nobody here even noticed that MC/Visa left. Even MC/Visa cards haven't stopped working and are working to this day (banks made a rule that cards that expire after 2022 continue to work for several more years so that everybody has time to switch to MIR).

[seydor]

> seamlessly

It's not seamless if it includes a war, global isolation, exodus of all business and disconnection of the banks. This means they were left with no alternative, in which case, sure, it's 'seamless' to use the only alternative method.

Europe will have a lot of friction with consumer habits and Visa will always be relevant for buying things from outside EU. These are all competing entities which hate anything that makes them seamlessly lose their business.

[dathinab]

This isn't about the payment network. The EU already has their own payment network, too.

It's about card payment and even if things ending up in your network they first going through visa.

And it's about online payment (PayPal).

[dathinab]

> This is about cross-border payments within the EU.

no it isn't

for bank to bank payment your statement might be true

but this isn't true for EC card payment and most online payment

_all_ EC cards either use the Visa Payment network and secure modules or the Mastercard one (but by now it's mostly Visa in most places). Sure they have your banks local branding but it's Visa anyway.

This also applies to payment terminal, most (not all) go through the Visa payment network to process payments.

And even in the same country a lot of online payment either goes through credit cards (again mostly Visa in EU) or PayPal. This isn't technically needed at all but due to fragmentation whatever alternative you want to use is just sometimes available.

Which is where Wero comes in:

- try to reduce fragmentation by making it a cooperation across many banks (of which most had their own failed PayPal alternative)

- onboard people on (local) online banking and private Phone2Phone payment (e.g. bill sharing)

- then (now) expand to pushing some payment terminal providers to support it with Phone based payment. There are multiple initiatives for it.

The later part is possible due to 3 reasons:

- payment apps on phone bypassing secure module monopoly nonsense related to EC/Credit cards and visa

- a lot of the in-person checkout systems of small businesses are now a tablet + separate cash register + EC terminal. This means that even if the EC terminal doesn't support Wero the payment system can still do so through their tablet.

- Also I think some of the wider used payment terminal in large EU specific chains can get Wero support with a software update.

Still it's by far not a perfect situation:

- still too much fragmentation/to little adoption by banks

- "old" payment terminals and (physical) checkout systems which are bound to Visa and can't easily be updated

So there most likely won't be a hard break anytime soon, and your EC card will likely continue using Visa secure module and network for a very very long time.

But having a technical working alternative which can slowly start eating market share is already a huge step forward.