alt Hacker NewsI'm a happy GLS Bank customer, and I've just learned about its involvement in Taler. Pretty awesome.
Europe desperately needs its own digital payment solutions to reduce its dependence on US companies and its exposure to sanctions that could target EU citizens if the president has a bad day.
GLS is also on board with Wero, which, unfortunately, hasn't seen big adoption yet.
I really hope Taler takes off.
Replies
roundabout-host • today at 6:55 AM
Wero has the problem that it depends on Android or iOS.
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hocuspocus • yesterday at 9:38 PM
You mean sanctions that have targeted EU citizens.
Wero has the right momentum, it'll get there. But federating mobile wallets in the Eurozone and eventually Europe at large is no small feat.
grothoff • yesterday at 9:06 PM
I should stress that GLS has been very helpful, and continues to be helpful.
In Poland everyone uses Blik, recently even Revolut (a popular pan-EU neobank) started supporting it for transactions in Poland. It’s trusted, available for 10+y and generally a successful project.
I don’t think it ever tried expanding outside of Poland though.
When it comes to Wero—I’m not sure. My bank recently replaced “payconiq” with it, and I don’t see any benefits or new features and the app seems amateurish.
I guess the single market is not really “single” in the US sense.
https://www.blik.com/en (source: I’m Polish, but moved abroad ~4y ago)