I know Wero is still in its infancy and the digital Euro is still a few years away, even if you believe there’ll be no delays. But depending on where you live you can already do a lot for EU financial independence.
- Use cash (very easy but not ideal in many situations/online)
- Use a national payment providers:
- Germany 🇩🇪: Girocard
- Netherlands 🇳🇱: iDEAL
- France 🇫🇷: Cartes Bancaires
- Poland 🇵🇱: BLIK
- Italy 🇮🇹:Bancomat/PagoBancomat
- Many other options, check for your country
- Use SEPA direct debit mandate or wire money directly if you can
- Sign up to a european crypto exchange and use it for direct purchases. although I get if you don’t like crypto but this is just for direct purchases
Otherwise American Payment providers usually get at least 1% and if you use card payment a lot over time that can really add up. This also mostly makes sense when buying from a european company. For US companies it really doesn’t matter much. I’ve been trying to replace Amazon with Otto and I use SEPA direct debit mandate to avoid fees.
I actually created a Klarna accout to take a step away from Paypal. Everything was fine, until I wanted to do my first transaction. They actually wanted me to put in my bank password in their login form, so that they could “verify my identity”. WTF. There was no other option. Immediately logged out and won’t turn back - except for deleting my account.
Absolutely, fucking trash service.
A day after I first used them and was forced to give them a phone number “for security” I got a fishing SMS claiming to be a bank I am not using.
Wtf?? They wanted your bank password on a form of this? Sounds like a fucking scam website