We Europeans would love to quit Visa and Mastercard too!
this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2025
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Speak up for Wero!
Sure, supported in all four EU countries....
Yes, Mastercard and VISA were immediately available worldwide, weren't they?
They didn't have a competition at that time. People are lazy and spoiled by definition, you can't expect masses to switch to an inferior solution (by reach I mean). That said, the payment system has to be rethought. Currently we are at mercy of big institutions. If we want it properly, it has to change, it has to be open and not controlled by any country/union/corp. Digital euro would solve dependency on foreign states (US) but won't solve the other part.
So your proposal to have the same reach as VISA and Mastercard on day one otherwise you won't use it?
No. I'm saying if the proposal didn't have reach at least across EU, people won't switch. As for now, how can I, being outside those four countries?
It is absolutely insane that every time I, a Swede in Sweden, go into a Swedish store and buy a Swedish product, using Swedish kronor, that I have in my Swedish bank, and earned through working my Swedish job, that I have paid my Swedish tax on, the transaction goes through a US company.
...and cutting fees that will stay in USA...
I bet that makes you want to curse in sweedish.
Not only US Big Tech, but Big Tech in general. More selfhosting, more open source - less proprietary bullshit with vendor lock-in.
Not to mention all the IBM computers crunching COBOL code
Except they just don't. Actually, they migrate from on-prem to hyperscalers. Our whole Auth is through M$.
Dutch lender Amsterdam Trade Bank collapsed in 2023 after its parent company was placed on the U.S. sanctions list and its American IT provider withdrew online data storage services, in one of the sharpest examples of the impact on companies that see their tech withdrawn.
Banks are nowhere close to doing this. Itโs risky to switch out technology like that. Itโs a lot of work. If you want them to make this step youโll need to force them.
I thought the way they were working towards that on the EU level was with forcing banks to adopt the instant payment system.
Banks do whatever they can for money. They will fund any industry and anybody that makes them money. Drug cartels, monopolies, fascists, dictators, ... They will give out bad loans to struggling countries, they will refuse lowering fees for remittances, just anything for money. They are part of the last group I would ask to do anything about US reliance.
Banks can only be forced to act in our interest. Never will they do it unless there is benefit for them.
I mean that be great if banks wouldnโt have risk based approaches (required by EU almost everywhere btw) which surprise surprise lean towards US companies in some areas due to the e.g. stability or scalability of those services and all the shit they need to operate according to - guess what - EU rules for client facing services. EU fell behind on the cloud provider stuff and now the choice for international banks is to go US or โฆ US (since everything else is quite above their risk/value ratio for such large companies).
Plus (edit) me as I was saying the same for years...