‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

European payments groups join forces to challenge US dominance

63 points · 92 comments · vrganj

  1. BlackRabbit1 · · focus · HN ↗
    Attempt number 2000?
    1. M95D · · focus · HN ↗
      Attempt at ... what? All the national payment systems are already working. They're now interconnecting them.
      1. andor · · focus · HN ↗
        And this seems to be another attempt at that. We already had the European Payments Initiative (with Wero), and now they are starting the European Network for Payments. Sounds like the People's Front of Judea vs. the Judean People's Front.

        Edit: There was also the Euro Alliance of Payment Schemes

        1. whizzter · · focus · HN ↗
          Since Wero (that is included in the new initiative) already has a mass from Germany and France, including Spanish and Italian operators more or less locks down something without major competition inside the EU market creating something universally useful that now has a large enough mass to become the defacto standard.

          Notably absent is Swish (that is probably the oldest banking-backed mobile payment app in Europe operating since 2012), they were kind-of-interested in cross-transactions when the Vipps/Mobilepay merger also connected with some Finnish party but iirc nothing happend.

          No idea if it was due to hubris and protecting their own market or feeling that technology matching was problematic (Swish has a bunch of features like corporate reciving/payouts, payment-requests,birthday cards, receiver identification,etc that might or might not mesh well with foreign providers).

    2. whizzter · · focus · HN ↗
      Mastercard pretty much depended on Eurocard/Europay for it's European reach (and vice versa) before the 2 merged, European institutions didn't have a problem selling out important infrastructure because Europeans overall trusted American stability and cooperation.
      1. ahartmetz · · focus · HN ↗
        Yes we did before the orange terror clown.
Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.