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'March to independence': Christine Lagarde wants EU to ditch Visa, Mastercard for own platform
(www.businesstoday.in)
this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
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I can already send money instantly, for free, through SEPA without a singular private company earning a cut or tracking me.
A bank account is needed, but there are thousands to choose from, and in the EU by law they cannot refuse to open a basic account for a private EU citizen.
Why should we use Wero/Revolut/Venmo/whatever instead? Intercompatibility within just one network means another network effect, that does not look like a long term solution to me. Just like Telegram, though very convenient to use with a nice UI, is no solution to Whatsapp.
Wero seems to be solving the problem of copy-pasting our IBAN. What if any bank app would just recognise a standardised QR code with that data? Who would then subscribe to Wero with a phone number and email and risk getting scammed or blocked for any random reason?
SEPA is not instant. It's still one day as standard.
You can't use SEPA to pay in the grocery store, because the cash register has no way to confirm your payment until tomorrow. That's the thing cards and various apps like WERO solve currently.
Most of these apps are tied to a traditional card, but some are tied directly to the bank account and some can do both.
Anyway, the independence from American software is still far away, since most people will be using Android or iOS to use those apps..
The standard bank transfer takes at least a day as you said, but the instant one is regulated to take less than 10 seconds in total (in practice, it feels instant). Apparently introduced in 2017. I've had it on my home banking (app too) since then I think, but from my previous bank account they cost a whooping 7โฌ, with my current bank the instant transfers are just as free as the normal ones so I use them all the time. I recently bought a used motorcycle within a morning thanks to this.
Wero itself is likely based on SEPA Instant Payments.
I was comparing them to the services used to send money to other people, but of course as you said the big thing we're still missing is a unified point of sale payment network in all of the eurozone, maybe Wero will be the one, in that case I'll be happy to use it, but IMHO we should have a standard public one based on SEPA Instant payments.
Wero is an added step on top, still much better than the competition, but they're currently a convenient alternative to bank transfers (for people who didn't discover the instant SEPA ones), and also as you noted unfortunately based on apps that run solely on American platforms. It's mentioned on their wikipedia page too. I'll keep an eye on them though, they could still work for me, we'll see.