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
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    55
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 days 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.

    • Dyskolos@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      Wero flew by my radar, thanks for the hint. Three of my banks even support it already, awesome!

    • jagermo@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      4 days 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.