The payer couldn't care less about how much the store pays for the transaction. He or she just wants to tap with their phone, and the default here are Visa/MC cards. In addition to the transaction price not being an argument for the payer, Wero also afaik does not have as much consumer protection as (certainly some) credit cards offer. I also bet the average person doesn't understand or care about the whole political dispute either. Again, they just want to pay easily and safely.
I don't think Wero can "win" this from just the merchants side. It's got to be better for the customer's side.
In addition, this only starts in 13 countries. There are 27 EU members. So there is a lot of big ambitions but not followed by actions. Which is what we are sadly used to.
So when I from Slovakia want to buy something in a French eshop, I'm out of luck. And when on a vacation, can't use this system either, while a French person on a vacation in Slovakia can't use it either. My guess is people will mostly continue to use credit/debit cards.
The whole SEPA area has instant SEPA payments. You can stick that into QRs or whatever. Some merchants take payments by SEPA, instant or not, but we need something else if we want to replace both online and in-person card payments throughout the whole EU, and at this point I doubt the Wero will be the replacement.
Not everyone is in eurozone, there are countries with instant QR payments that are not SEPA. It is nowdays quite common to get a QR with your invoice, online or in person, it might not be just SEPA. But for now cards are still more accepted, and work even if I leave my phone at home or it rans out of battery. Not sure how Wero or QR going to solve that, SEPA or not, but still useful for a lot of cases, online payments etc, even if it does not solve every edge case.
Every EU country even outside of Eurozone is in SEPA. But SEPA payments can have their own issues - I believe they were not free in all countries some time ago, not sure what the status is currently.
There might be other instant QR payment systems out there though - I digress but on our recent visit to China we had to use Alipay as the cards are not accepted at most places and of course it works through scanning QRs, either you scan the vendor's code or they scan yours, and then you enter or confirm the amount and that's it. But the issue I have with these systems is the same as yours - we are fully dependent on our phones with no backup.
"Hey buddy, I give you a tiny tiny discount if you pay without fraud protection..."
I mean, some places do that. But for the consumer there is no advantage. It's probably fine at cafés, restaurants and such. But why would you as a consumer want it for any more important purchase? As you mention.
Yes I think the article is vastly overstating the importance of this payment system, but do not underestimate the importance of the sentiment behind it.
The US is done as a global power, all their soft influence is gone, and the EU sees them as an adversary now.
They have Bunny Shield which I have in place as a first stage, but Bunny points to my own ingress boxes / load balancers which themselves are running ModSecurity, OWASP CRS and CrowdSec.
Mentioned this in another reply; in my case I am running Bunny Shield, but my Bunny origins are then my own ingress boxes / LBs which themselves are running ModSecurity with OWASP CRS; and CrowdSec.
I feel this and as a German company, we have our stuff hosted in the EU. But where it becomes pointless to have the host in the EU, is when Cloudflare is a requirement. Since we expose ourselfs through their certificate, we might as well host with a US company. And I’m not aware of a EU Cloudflare competitor with similar WAF offering.
A full integration with Cloudflare means it is their SSL certificate that’s presented to the visitor of your website, and all traffic is passed through them. They do read everything.
Thus it’s pointless to host in the EU if everything first has to go through a US company.
This is correct and to show what that means:
Frankfurt to Berlin with a fast ICE: 4 hours, no changes.
With regional trains only: 10-14 hours, 3-6 changes.
With a car this trip is 5 hours. No one in their right mind would ever do such a trip with regionals only, it is extremely painful. In addition, the chance that one of the connections will be missed is extremely high.
You can still try that, but that's not the intention. The target audience are basically commuters. I had a colleague a couple years ago that went around 100km total both ways to work. He briefly considered switching to train but balked at the price of about 200 per month. This despite the fact that gas cost him more, his car commute was longer and he was paying for a parking spot. I guess the logic was he already paid for the car, so he better use it. But at 50 per month, he'd ditch the sunken cost that is the car in a heartbeat.
I’m skeptical given that reducing your colleague’s cost from around 1000€/mo all-in (inc. parking) to 200€/mo wasn’t enough that a further reduction to 50€/mo will tip the scales.
Fair, but I think people are not good in looking at the big picture. The old price was in the ballpark of the costs people notice (gas). But the proof is in the pudding, so we will see.
How do you know it was 1000€? Maybe if it was closer to let’s say 500 and an extra 300 was seemed like a reasonable price to them for the additional convenience.
Interesting logic! Even with the sunk cost of car, insurance, etc. it'd still have to be significantly cheaper or quicker for me to use it over a train, on which I can do other things. (I suppose its privacy is something, but not worth as much to me as the freedom to read or close my eyes.)
In the US, I'm about 45 miles from the nearest large city where I worked (many days) fairly briefly. I'd be about $400-500/month for commuter rail, commuter rail parking, and in-city transit passes. But the reality is that I'd be something close to $40/day driving (plus any parking) even given that I owned the car anyway.
I always took the train unless I was doing something in the evening--in which case the train was a poor option in general. (Once you got out of commuting hours there were only a few trains for the rest of the night.)
Sure, but if you miss your connection you can just take the next train. Frankfurt to Berlin might be impossible, but Hamburg to Berlin is manageable (4-5h), if money is tight, as is Hamburg to Sylt (3h) and many other connections in the 200-400 km range.
I don't think it's meant to let you replace all car trips you could possibly make with a single 50 euro payment per month.
Nobody in their right mind would, yeah. So they just have to pay for the train if they don't want to buy and maintain and fuel a car for such journeys. Myself, I'd never consider going by car between such well-connected cities, I'd have to drive (can't read a book for those 5 hours) and deal with parking and either rent or borrow a car (or buy, I suppose).
I think the game changer of this ticket is to replace the second or third family car. The few occasions that you actually needed more than one car you could now just do with public transport without a lot of hassle.
Question is if the 600€/annum is cheap enough for people to opt for this. But at least many companies are looking into giving the 49€ ticket at a discount - and that is actually desired from the state as the state also gives the company a discount if they do so.
Still great for everyone who just cannot afford a ICE ticket or even a car. And there is a huge in-between area between local connections and long distance. There are a lot of medium distance connections, where the time difference isn't that large and which become suddenly "free" for those ticket owners.
We used to do that as students. There was a ticket that would allow germany wide travel with regional trains on weekends. It’s long, but it was cheap and on trains isn’t too bad.
You'll need an app-specific cryptographic key to connect to the push service, unless that's changed. And you'll need some system for registering and de-registering push tokens (unless that's also changed).
I have been going to the sauna of the nearby gym everyday for about 2 years now, rarely skipping it.
It is honestly hard to express how much I love the effects of it and how much I attribute to it. I can not live without it anymore.
If I wake up after a bad nights sleep and feel extremely groggy, sauna fixes it.
If I am overworked to the point where my head is pulsating, sauna fixes it, and I get another 2 hours of extremely focussed work done afterwards.
Bad mood, a cold, sore muscles, even certain types of headache, a sauna can fix.
I should mention that a sauna for me includes a cold shower immediately after leaving it, as cold as the shower will go. This is the key, the shock will make all the difference. Then you lay down, at least 10 minutes.
I do 2 rounds most days, it’s about 80C, I manage between 12-15 minutes in the first sitting, then 8-10 in the second.
I can not recommend it enough, it has changed my life.
So 12-15 mins + 10 laying down. Twice. ~ 40 mins or so per day you’re taking to sit/lay and do nothing (I assume you aren’t on the phone or reading/listening).
I wonder how much of this is simply the meditation effect / you’re just taking true mental breaks.
Yes that’s about right, no phone or anything, I just close my eyes. Sometimes I fall asleep.
It is very possible, that this is simply what it takes to sent my mind into a mental break.
I have tried Headspace and all that stuff and I see the benefits, it is just much easier to send your mind into relax mode after above mentioned schedule.
There also is a steam room adjacent to the sauna and from time to time I use it as well, but I feel like the heat does not penetrate as “deep”. What’s nicer is how the steam soothes the airways in comparison to a Finnish sauna.
I just moved to London from Sweden, and I miss these european gym prices :(
In London, I can't find a gym/pool combo that is under 120gbp a month, and even at this minimum price; they're 1.2 meters deep and filled with sand, band-aids...and I am not kidding I saw a menstrual cup in one of them once.
2 star surroundings at 5 star prices. Most unreasonably and incongruously poor ratio of living costs to service quality of any major megacity I've spent time in. Love it, but wouldn't live in London again in its current state unless offered an absurdly good reason for doing so. Rip-off Britain's shop window to the world.
Living in NYC I pay $225 a month for my gym that has non-crowded swimlanes + sauna, but ultimately I'd rather live in a shitbox apartment that costs 200/mo less and have the gym membership than live in a nicer place, cause swimming and sauna brings me enough physical and mental health benefits to be worth it. People talk about how good lifting is for mental health but I get way more from swim + sauna.
100% agree. I also do a swim 2-3 days a week and then sauna. It multiplies the mentioned effects greatly. I don’t think I could feel any better than I do after swim + sauna.
I don't think Wero can "win" this from just the merchants side. It's got to be better for the customer's side.