In my experience most countries in Europe have long had country-specific payment systems like that, with a few notable exceptions (like the UK) were everything operates on top of VISA or Mastercard.
The problem with those is usually to do payments without the physical card and cross-country payments.
The first problem has been address in the last decade or so with things mobile phone apps that read QR codes and are linked to a card or bank account (such as MBWay in Portugal and iDEAL in The Netherlands).
The second is still a big problem - some cross-country systems have appeared and some national systems interoperate, but that’s only a handful of countries each and it’s far from a pan-European system (Wero is maybe the one with the broadest geographical coverage and it still only covers 5 countries), much less something that is accepted anywhere in the World.
Having worked in the Financial Industry in London, I wouldn’t trust any UK financial solution provider (including payment processors) any more than a US one since Financial Regulation in both is a joke, both governments are in thrall to Finance and both governments are, for supposed Democracies, insanely high on civil society surveillance having things like secret information courts that can just issue secret bulk surveillance orders.
The UK might be in the European Continent, but for somebody based on the EU they provide no more rights than the US.
If one is based in the EU, it’s overall safer to stick to EU based companies where one actually has some right and companies doing fishy things towards EU citizens run real risks of being heavily punished for it.
In Italy we have our payment processor called “Bancomat”, but it’s rarely supported outside of physical stores.
In my experience most countries in Europe have long had country-specific payment systems like that, with a few notable exceptions (like the UK) were everything operates on top of VISA or Mastercard.
The problem with those is usually to do payments without the physical card and cross-country payments.
The first problem has been address in the last decade or so with things mobile phone apps that read QR codes and are linked to a card or bank account (such as MBWay in Portugal and iDEAL in The Netherlands).
The second is still a big problem - some cross-country systems have appeared and some national systems interoperate, but that’s only a handful of countries each and it’s far from a pan-European system (Wero is maybe the one with the broadest geographical coverage and it still only covers 5 countries), much less something that is accepted anywhere in the World.
I have discovered Curve recently. It lets me pay through the phone’s NFC where Google Pay refuses to do so. Curve is the direct payment processor.
Curve is a UK company.
Having worked in the Financial Industry in London, I wouldn’t trust any UK financial solution provider (including payment processors) any more than a US one since Financial Regulation in both is a joke, both governments are in thrall to Finance and both governments are, for supposed Democracies, insanely high on civil society surveillance having things like secret information courts that can just issue secret bulk surveillance orders.
The UK might be in the European Continent, but for somebody based on the EU they provide no more rights than the US.
If one is based in the EU, it’s overall safer to stick to EU based companies where one actually has some right and companies doing fishy things towards EU citizens run real risks of being heavily punished for it.