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 🎉

  • 𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚗 𝙼𝚎𝚘𝚠English
    101·
    4 days ago

    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):

    It is possible for the merchant to refund a contract order, for example if the contract cannot be fulfilled after all. Refunds are only possible after the customer paid and before the exchange has wired the payment to the merchant. Once the funds have been wired, refunds are no longer allowed by the Taler exchange.

    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).

    • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
      5·
      4 days ago

      the anonymous aspect might sound nice but KYC laws prevent merchants from accepting it

      GNU Taler’s documentation already covers KYC laws.

      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.

      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.

      It also means exchanges can make tons of money by keeping the transferred funds in their account and collecting interest on it.

      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?

      The European Payments Initiative (EPI), which developed Wero, has indeed promised that the new payment method will not be more expensive than iDEAL for the first two years. However, it’s unclear what exactly this means. In any case, the rate will increase after two years, creating uncertainty about what the exact costs will be. And even if the per-transaction fee remains the same, the extra procedures around chargebacks will still cause a significant cost increase for businesses.

      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:

      Our pricing is clear and merchant-friendly: a small percentage fee with built-in caps, so you stay in control of costs - whether you’re processing €5 or €5,000. One model that works for businesses of all sizes.

      If you have a more clear source, let me know.

      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?

      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.

      • 𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚗 𝙼𝚎𝚘𝚠English
        3·
        4 days ago

        GNU Taler’s documentation already covers KYC laws.

        For exchanges, yes. For merchants, no.

        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.

        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.

        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?

        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.

        If you have a more clear source, let me know.

        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

        0.3% per transaction under €33.33, and a flat €0.10 for transactions of €33.33 or more.

        Basically you pay a percentage, but it’s capped at a maximum transaction amount. Far cheaper than creditcards at least.

        • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
          2·
          4 days ago

          For exchanges, yes. For merchants, no.

          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.

          Merchants can’t take possession of the funds, the exchange determines when the money is sent.

          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.

          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.

          I can’t say I disagree entirely, and I would hope that such oddities would be improved in the future.

          Fees differ per country […]

          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.

          • Señor Mono@feddit.orgOPEnglish
            2·
            4 days ago

            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?