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 might add that the German giropay/girocard nowadays mostly uses visa/MC anyway, so there’s no real progress.
And there are only two banks (chains) that even offer wero. I just made an account with one for wero. And so far have not found a way to use it 😁
But AFAIK Visa/MC only get money when the Debitcard network is used as fallback instead of Visa/MC even if it has their logo on it.
I can’t argue, my comment is already the peak of my knowledge of the girocard.
But even if that’s correct, they still get money and I still couldn’t really dodge them by just putting another layer on top. At least not fully.
That is not true. Girocard used to partner with maestro (part of mastercard). The maestro part of the card was only used if the girocard was not supported where you wanted to pay. That partnership was terminated. New girocards are simple girocards. Which also means they cannot be used outside of Germany anymore. Hell, there are even terminals in Germany that don’t support girocard anymore