Hey guys!

Visa and Mastercard are the 8th and 15th biggest companies in the world, worth more than 1.1T USD (!!!).

For any purchase made with a credit or debit cards and you give them 2-3% of your money.

That’s one the biggest waste of money from EU you can imagine.

I’m trying to find viable alternatives but except paying cash it seem there is no real alternative. Even in where I live there is an alternate payment service but they take the money from my mastercard, duh…

And the idea would be to have something even my grandma can use, not some nerdy solution, any thoughts?

Edit: Bitcoin would be a solution if widely adopted, but more realistic would be something accepted by every cashier machine, and if possible using the NFC of your phone, a kind of “Apple/Google” Pay, that goes directly from your bank to the bank’s shop. Where I live all debit cards are either visa or mastercard…

Edit2: There is an EU initiative that seem to be starting with WERO, never heard of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Initiative

Edit3: It seem that Paysafecard and Skrill are EU solutions and sometimes proposed in the payment method, but not with STRIPE payment solutions

  • alvvayson@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    2·
    1 year ago

    Wero will become the replacement over time.

    But for now, you’re stuck with Visa and Mastercard if your country doesn’t have a local alternative.

    Just get the cheapest option.

    • jagermo@feddit.org
      2·
      1 year ago

      Wero can win if the banks offer it with no additional cost to stores and, and this ia crucial, it offers credit and the blocking of funds for stuff like car rentals.

      It needs to be as easy a visa/MasterCard and cheaper / easier to run with the same features. I have hope, but that is a tough order.

  • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Bitcoin uses way to much energy to use as currency like that. gridcoin or any other one that uses proof of stake would be better if accepted but its a bit nicer if the energy put into it results in a useful product which gridcoin does.

  • Victor@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 year ago

    For any purchase made with a credit or debit cards and you give them 2-3% of your money.

    I’m not sure I understand this. The stores would be the ones to pay this fee, no? Not you with your money. The price of some item doesn’t change depending on whether you use cash or a debit or credit card. Not usually anyway, maybe a small local shop has done this to me once or twice in my life. Or maybe a fair stand or something.

    If we wanted to stop giving Mastercard and Visa “our” money, we would have to all band together as a world community and boycott them. 😬

    Please someone correct me if I’m wrong!

    Edit: I mean, yes, of course the price of those small transactions are included in the price of the item. So we are all “paying” Mastercard and Visa money, even those who aren’t using them. Which is still to my point that we need to all band together as a world community to boycott them, which seems futile in all honesty.

  • Sequence5666@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 year ago

    This might not help you OP, but alternative to VISA and Mastercard is UPI. India and some south east asian countries use that for transactions rapidly. Also India also built Rupay (not the currency) to break visa and mastercards duopoly.

      • reddig33@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        Discover network is up for sale. Capital One is trying to grab it. But if that doesn’t go through, a Canadian or European bank could try bidding for it.

      • Eiri@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        Dang it. I had forgotten that most debit cards now have partnerships like that.

        However, remember that debit card transaction fees are typically quite a bit lower (no exact numbers to support my claim, but for instance my hairdresser only takes credit for larger payments; small ones she only accepts debit, or she would just lose too much to the credit card company).

        So you wouldn’t NOT support MasterCard/Visa, but they WOULD receive less money.

        As for non-American credit cards, someone asked a similar question on Reddit and got technically valid but unsatisfying responses.

        For instance:

        https://www.reddit.com/r/amexcanada/comments/1j31ir0/comment/mfwmz5y/

        Like, when they say “don’t encourage the US” people don’t typically mean jumping to Chinese companies instead. Not to mention UnionPay is definitely not as widely supported as Visa or MasterCard.

        And while Japan isn’t exactly notorious for its human rights violations these days, I kinda doubt JCB cards would be very widely supported. And could you even get one if you’re not Japanese?

        • Tuuktuuk@kbin.melroy.org
          2·
          5 months ago

          Japan isn’t exactly notorious for its human rights violations these days

          It isn’t, but it actually does a lot of human rights violations. The Japanese justice system is largely based on the idea of “guilty until otherwise proven.”
          That causes horrific tragedies where families are torn apart just for bad luck. You never did anything, but if they cannot be sure you did not do the crime, they jail you just in case, even for years.

        • Tuukka R@sopuli.xyz
          1·
          1 year ago

          I’d like to know who got the idea to name the system with a word meaning “tax” in Finnish, one of the official languages of EU… Both are related to money, so there is a possibility for confusion.

          (We used to always use w, and had a reform some ~century ago to allow using v instead. Therefore, w is considered another form of v in Finnish, and thereby wero equals vero)

          • Baŝto@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            1·
            5 months ago

            The name is a portmanteau made up of the English personal pronoun we and the name of the European Union’s common currency, the Euro, but is also based on the Italian word vero, meaning true.

            Is what Wikipedia says.

            But it also has a similar sound to German Währung (currency).

            • Tuuktuuk@kbin.melroy.org
              1·
              5 months ago

              Thanks! It’s still a bit of a cock-up to choose a name like that, but at least there is some logic behind it.
              It feels a lot like the rule published by ECB in 2001 that you are not allowed to say “for the Euro”, “to the Euro”, “from the Euro” etc. in Finnish but must simply replace all those with the plain word “Euro” alone.

              A decision that makes sense for the 99 % but tramples our country because 1 % of EU population is a meaninglessly small number of people and therefore should not be taken into account. And should be trampled. (I’m apparently still feeling angry about that, even though in the end nobody ever tried to enforce that rule…)

              And then there’s a rule about diesel fuel that is otherwise very good but makes zero sense in the context of Lapland and actually means in practical terms “You are not allowed to use a diesel car in Lapland”. And it is still enforced! Even if Lapland has less than 0,1 % of EU’s population, it’s still not okay to go and trample them “because they’re only 0,1%”. A whole region shouldn’t be stomped to ground just because their population density is low.

              • Baŝto@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
                1·
                5 months ago

                Finland is also probably not in scope of this project. It’s pretty much a project of private banks (and semi-private banks) that’ll only cover Germany, France and BENELUX. OP’s claim of it being a “EU initiative”.

                For the other things:

                But yeah, such stuff happens occasionally. But usually you should get some exceptions in such situations.

                I deeply dislike the rules about “marmalade”, because it’s slowly impacting how these words are used in the German language. Marmelade is any kind of jam (strawberry was always the most popular flavor). I think we got an exception, but it’s still shifting.

      • minilemmy@feddit.orgOP
        1·
        1 year ago

        How do you pay cash online?

        And I don’t think the banking system is evil and should be destroyed, I just want the EU to be strong and independant, have tech and finance sovreinty

        • Tuukka R@sopuli.xyz
          1·
          1 year ago

          Online you pay by bank transfer. Instead of “credit card”, I choose “online bank”, click my bank’s name, enter my online banking login and password, give one of the single-use codes and press “transfer”. A bank transfer from my account to the bank account number defined by the shop is made, no money goes to USA.

      • Renohren@lemmy.today
        1·
        1 year ago

        Maestro isn’t a local system it’s a limited debit card like electron for visa. Other comments are about national Credit cards. WERO is the only European network pushed by the ECB (and begrudgingly taken up by most major European banks). It piggy backs on the Free-of-charge instant wiring SEPA system.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    I’d like to know if something works for all of EU. Because that’s the only reason for me to have Visa.
    Everything in my own country can be handled with “Dankort” our national universally accepted debit card. We also have local Mobile pay which is also pretty universal here.

    But those don’t work for purchases outside Denmark.

    • Baŝto@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      At most I expect that some company alliance manages to expand to all of Euro zone. But it doesn’t look like they are keen on bothering with currency exchange.