- cross-posted to:
- buyeuropean@feddit.uk
- cross-posted to:
- buyeuropean@feddit.uk
geteilt von: https://lemmy.world/post/41320668
🔗 Source: Sharknoon (Reddit)
I was looking for an alternative for PayPal and quickly stumbled upon Wero. But unfortunately Wero isn’t yet acceppted by all countries, banks and online shops. So I built werotracker.eu to keep track of the adoption of Wero.
➡️ Link: https://werotracker.eu/
This dashboard has the following features:
📈 Show adoption stats
🔍 Search for banks and online shops
✅ Filter for countries and support status (supported/announced/unsupported)
💸 See individual payment features (P2P, eCommerce, POS), not every Wero implementation is equal
📱 App availability
I hope this dashboard is helpful to you 😀
The site as well as the data is open-source under the Apache 2.0 License. You can find the source-code here: https://github.com/sharknoon/wero-tracker
If you see an error or your bank is missing, please give us a hint or contribute directly: https://github.com/sharknoon/wero-tracker?tab=readme-ov-file#contribution
Thank you and have fun 🎉
Per wikipedia:
Needing to rely on two pro-fascist tech companies seems like a particularly bad idea. Wero also does not appear to be anonymous.
A better alternative to Wero is GNU Taler, which is a properly open standard that is a true anonymous digital cash, and offers real independence from tech-bro corporations.
We have a community that discusses GNU Taler over at !money@slrpnk.net
Also @PracticalFail@feddit.org
This is a non-argument, even though it made it onto Wikipedia. A mass-adopted Taler-based payment system would also require mobile support, which would be gatekept by Google/Apple.
Breaking oligopolist control over the mobile ecosystem is a separate battle and applies to both Wero & Taler.
That’s not to say that Wero couldn’t do more in this regard, e.g. publish to F-Droid.
For iOS yes, for Android, no. You can have Android independent of Google, it’s what the Chinese are doing.
I can use the Taler firefox addon literally today on my Shift 6mq with postmarketOS with no compatibility layers.
Yea the UI isn’t great, but it already today is usable everywhere where firefox is usable, and unlike Wero, the client source code is available and the UX can be improved independently.
I think it’s great that you use privacy-enabling tech, and developing these is valuable in my eyes. But nothing about your setup screams “mass adoption” to me. I’ll spare everyone the mobile OS adoption charts, and browser adoption isn’t looking better.
You just can’t put out an on-par mobile service nowadays without an app in Play and Apple’s store. I don’t like it, but it is what it is.
I agree with you on numbersnumbers, but someone needs to build these things “for the nerds, by the nerds” before they can become adopted more broadly. It may take years, it may not happen, but before anything else you need a bunch of highly motivated folks and must recognise and nurture that.
The alternative is the big tech approach of binding until it’s mostly there, then dropping it on tonnes of people at once (or startups and growth hacking).
That’s why Taler has native apps in the google play store, the apple app store, fdroid and a direct apk download. And still it does not prevent me from using it on other devices like Wero does.
Okay, Wero does not have a web application at the moment. Valid criticism.
You‘re missing the point that Android and iOS are still the predominant platforms and realistically won’t go away anytime soon.
Using wero instead of PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, … is a first step and if implemented properly the hurdle is lower than GNU Taler.
GNU Taler does the same job that Wero is attempting (replacing Paypal, Mastercard, etc), only better and anonymous. We should be pushing for a long-term solution that can’t be abused, and GNU Taler is that solution.
Android and iOS have both made it clear that they will only become further enshittified and consumer hostile. We should be advocating for non-corporate opensource replacements for them as well to truly take back our computing freedom and privacy, in same way that we should advocate for GNU Taler to free us from any corporate control over our payment systems, and give us a genuine cash-like anonymity that cannot be abused by states or corporations.
Taler doesn’t offer consumer protection, and the anonymous aspect might sound nice but KYC laws prevent merchants from accepting it (and in a lot of cases, knowing who the customer is is quite helpful from a merchant perspective).
But the real killer to me seems to be this (from the Taler docs):
This basically means your payment method is dead on conception. Online stores in the EU are required to offer no-questions-asked refunds within 2 weeks. This means a store has to wait 2 weeks at minimum before they get their money (modern payment methods are instant or next-day, 2 weeks is exceptionally long). That’s a massive dealbreaker. It also means exchanges can make tons of money by keeping the transferred funds in their account and collecting interest on it.
It also weirdly means that refunds aren’t possible once a transfer is settled. That’s a weirdly brief window imo.
It’s also quite funny to me that Taler claims to be immune to chargeback fraud, when it doesn’t offer chargebacks in the first place. Makes it easy, don’t it?
I don’t really see why a consumer or merchant would necessarily want to use this over other options. Perhaps a restaurant might, or some other store that sells things that are intended to be consumed immediately, or a service provided immediately (like a theme park or cinema). But even then there’s other, more widely available options instead.
Wero is in a completely different space, doing primarily ecom payments instead. Taler doesn’t do what Wero does any better (or in many cases, at all it seems).
GNU Taler’s documentation already covers KYC laws.
They would only need to wait 2 weeks if they specifically want to be able to reverse a charge, but AFAIK a merchant can take possession of the money much earlier, and can still send a refund to a buyer’s Taler wallet at any time as a separate transaction.
I’m not sure how that’s a problem specifically? Why does it matter if they gain a little interest on it on the time that they have it until the merchant exchanges their tokens for the money? Is that worse than the fees associated with Wero?
I’m assuming that source is financially biased against Wero’s success, but I couldn’t find anything else about Wero’s fees except from Wero themselves, which was very vague:
If you have a more clear source, let me know.
That is a legitimate downside of Taler. Personally I think the trade-off is worth it for the increased privacy, since corporations and states will inevitably use your purchase history against you at some point in the future if fascists take power once again.
For exchanges, yes. For merchants, no.
Merchants can’t take possession of the funds, the exchange determines when the money is sent. After that, according to the docs a refund will trigger a 410 Gone status code.
https://docs.taler.net/core/api-merchant.html#obtaining-refunds
It seems there is a template to offer a refund, but the customer would have to go and “accept” the refund manually, which is poor UX compared to every other payment method out there where this happens automatically.
It means exchanges are financially incentivised to keep hold of the funds for as long as possible, delaying payments. In a world that’s rapidly moving towards instant payments (like Wero), this means transferring money will happen at a snails pace. You can configure the wire deadline, but given that shortening it makes the refund UX worse I’m not sure it’s ideal. It’s weird to have this be a tradeoff anyway.
Fees differ per country, it’s based on what the previous most popular payment method offered. In NL it’s cheaper because iDEAL is fairly cheap. But here’s a source on BE costs: https://www.ing.be/en/business/payments/wero/wero
Basically you pay a percentage, but it’s capped at a maximum transaction amount. Far cheaper than creditcards at least.
After looking around a bit more, I found this link here, which seems to suggest a KYC implementation is still in progress, since existing services don’t meet their criteria.
The Wire deadline as you mentioned later limits how long they can keep the money, and if they are purposefully delaying, they could be investigated by an oversight body or go unused compared to an exchange that does not.
I can’t say I disagree entirely, and I would hope that such oddities would be improved in the future.
Cheers for the info and link, that does make it quite cheap, I must say.
Based on that, Wero is objectively an improvement over the credit card monopoly or paypal. However I fear that if it wins out this payment war, it will end up being the only option, and I very much doubt that it will ever implement the privacy features from GNU Taler that I consider absolutely paramount for a future digital payment system to not be abused in the future. We’re already seeing how governments are pushing for less online privacy with the constant Chat Control legislation, which we’re only narrowly avoiding, and with far right parties across Europe gaining more and more of the vote, I very much think it prudent to advocate for privacy respecting technologies wherever possible, even at the expensive of some convenience.
Guys. With all the infos and the talks at 29c3 and all available articles, maybe feature/explain GNU taler in a separate post to the nice people of buyFromEU? Maybe with an outlook towards adoption and usability from your perspective?
The refund possibility is a real banger.
I know what GNU Taler is about and even took a look at it several month ago, tried the demo wallet. Even my bank is also following the progression close.
The first hurdle to get people on board I usability. I don’t disagree with you for the long-term, but at the moment - until further support - GNU Taler is for tech savvy people whereas WERO is in the middle of a broader rollout even at merchants.
As with Android or iOS. There are alternative mostly Android based OSes, but as long as simple stuff like banking does not work (due to root/trust issues) the acceptance from an end-user-perspective will remain low. Changing mindsets and ecosystems is a long-term game.
Are you both arguing that we don’t need banking on anything but iOS and Android because people won’t switch, and that people won’t switch because banking only works on iOS and Android?
Btw: Banking works of course on my non-Android/non-iOS Smartphones. Somehow the banks have zero trust issues in letting me use their Onlinebanking Website from these devices. With my hardware QR Tan generator I can easily make instant SEPA transfers using these devices. But if I see a Wero QR code, I have no means to send money to the receiver.
You know exactly that a different type of (App-based) banking is meant by that 🤷♂️
And no, we’re not arguing that.
I fear that without more Bank adoption and dog-fooding of GNU Taler, it may not ever get that additional support, as it is diverted in favor of the ‘good enough’ solution of Wero. I can’t say I’d mind having Wero in addition to Taler as an option.