This is a CBDC that she wants, something they have been talking about for years. Likely they want this because many European countries wont be able to survive higher interest rates caused by aging demographics, as the US high interest rates suck up global liquidity making rolling over debt more expensive.
They will be able to slow inflation using the programmability of the money to prevent you from surpassing your allotted climate credits, as they are already forcing companies to measure their c02 usage in a system called the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). They will also be able to increase inflation via issuing expiring stimulus, which would allow them to issue stimulus without worrying about the 18 month lag.
What Europe also wanted was a global climate change system, where they collect tax revenue from carbon credits, which would be charged to foreign emitters. Trump recently front run this with his own tariff system, following project 2025’s idea of eliminating all international tariffs. Though countries like Canada are talking about joining Europes climate plan instead, I think all countries will have to decide where to hand the keys to their domestic economic policy.
GNU-Taler is ready
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Does using Google wallet give any fee to Google?
They don’t get paid directly, just with your data.
Are there any companies working on something like that?
I would like this. I enjoy playing hentai games, but MasterVisa bans or alters the games by denying their services to creators and stores alike. This is an affront to free speech.
??? relevance to parent comment?
Overruled.
Let’s not forget, they Almost forced Onlyfans to shut down because they were going to cut them off from their payment system.
For real? What the f that’s absurd
Yeah they can exert a lot of influence
Yup. For example, the game “Seeds of Chaos” had to change their introduction on account of demons trying to corrupt the protagonists through blackmail, and the removal of the minotaur scenes.
Visa and MasterCard are why we have never had a blockbuster minotaur movie
California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii would also like to request EU status and new non facist payment methods
You forgot New Jersey.
The Cali data companies will be in for a shock when they suddenly have to comply with any regulation, let alone the GDPR
They got CCPA
What I imagine that to contain:
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USA! USA! USA!
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Communism bad!
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See 1 and 2
Aren’t EU technically a Social Democracy ?
The EU is not a country.
Some countries in the EU currently have or have had Social Democratic governments, but mainly they have governments which are Neoliberal, though a milder form than the US: generally the mainstream Rightwing around this parts has policies which are to the left of the Democrat Party in the US, though not by much, so for example nobody has a Healthcare system which is as bad as the US - even the ones with a Health Insurance based system have way more rules and consumer protections around it - and even in the worst countries Public Transport is better than in the in US.
Then again at least one country in the EU - Hungary - currently has Fascism whilst the other ones which are said to have Far-Right governments (such as Italy) politically sit between the US Democrats and Republicans.
In the things which are the responsibility of the EU (i.e. trade-related subjects), the EU is significantly more pro-consumer than the US, with for example the precautionary principle - i.e. proven safe before allowed, rather than the US’ method of allowing until proven unsafe - being used for chemical substances which people tend to come in contact with, and more broadly with consumers having way more rights all across the EU than they have in the US (were it massively depends on the State) and with stricter rules when it comes to pollution and more broadly Environmental damage.
I supposed that in the things which fall under the responsibility of the EU, it tends to be sort of half-way between Neoliberal and Social-Democrat, for example it’s very Neoliberal when it comes to Finance, but it’s Social Democrat when it comes to consumer rights and protections, especially for things like food, though even there it’s sort of somewhere between lax and strict in regulatory terms. I suspect this is due to different countries caring more about different domains and hence the politics of countries which care more about a specific domain getting more strongly imprinted in legislation at an EU level so it ends up reflected into very different political spins for different trade domains.
I didn’t say EU was a country, who do you think I am ? An American ?
Then why did you ask what the current policies of 27 countries’ governments were as if there were only one?
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I hope Canada and Mexico can join. It’s time to start bankrupting murican companies.
Most card transactions in Norway go through a local system called BankAxept, and have for decades. A lot of Norwegians don’t even know, because the same cards also support VISA, and they think that’s what they’re using.
I know that both Portugal and The Netherlands also have their own local systems, but you can’t really use the system of one country in another country.
The only country in Europe which I know for sure doesn’t have its own local payments system is the UK, though it would not surprise me if there are others.
What’s really needed is some sort of pan-european payments system, ideally one which also gets accepted in the rest of the World. The closest we have to it at the moment in the EU is that you can do normal (so called SEPA, if I remember it correctly) bank transfers to any account at any bank in the EU, all for the same cost (generally free) independently of it being in the same country or across borders, and quite a number of retailers all over Europe do accept payment via bank transfer, but that’s not an actual payment system, it’s a bank transfer system that you sometimes can use to pay an online order from a retailer.
As things stand now, if for example from my Portuguese bank account I want to buy something from an online store in Germany, the payment has to go via Visa (Mastercard isn’t really common in Portugal)
Same in Germany with the girocard system. Key feature is that there’s no real intermediary, it’s a standard the banking sector came up with to easily authorise ordinary bank transfers. Online shopping was never an issue in Germany push come to shove you just wire them the money.
And I have no fucking idea why the EPI is launching a whole phone-based system instead/before standardising debit card infrastructure. That app offers literally nothing that I can’t already do with my card and bank app on my phone short of a wallet and why the hell would I want that I already have a giro account. And why would I want to send money to a telephone number instead of an IBAN. What kind of stuff are those people on that they think that’s a feature.
But at least the general structure of the EPI is similar to how girocard came about: A consortium of banks, public, cooperative, private, coming up with interoperability standards. Germany has like 1400 banks (and that’s after a lot of mergers), most of them only serving a district or larger town and surrounding villages for those there was never an alternative to working with each other and the over-regional banks jumped on to not be left out.
Sometimes, all you need is some marketing. E.g. it’s been possible to print out a QR code with your account info so you can receive transactions at a flea market for ages (in lieu of having your phone display it and people scanning from there), and ever since SEPA instant payment it’s basically cash, as far as the seller is concerned.
My main takeaway from the comments on this post is that basically all of Europe solved this a long time ago at the domestic level, but that international interoperability is lacking.
No, not all of Europe solved this. The payment systems they made are for internet payments with instant confirmation. Many European nations are still on the Visa Debit or Debit Mastercard systems for card payments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maestro_(debit_card)
https://www.docs.pay.sibs.com/payment-methods/
Ideal, bizum, bancontact, cartes bancaires, Mbway are all euro based. I wonder why they are not interoperable.
That’s the state of literally everything in Europe.
Hey now, we were able to standardize the curvature of cucumbers.
Standardise*
European spelling is superior to US spelling!
Maybe there was a more important need for it. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I get the phone based system. People remember their phone number and email address, they do not remember their bank account details. It’s a lot easier to initiate the transfer in the moment if it’s based on something the recipient can just tell you. QR codes are an acceptable workaround for a small vendor, but not really ideal for paying back the friend who paid for lunch.
Pretty much every country has something like that ready or in the works. Venmo is huge in the US, Vipps (which uses the aforementioned BankAxept in the backend) is emerging as the de-facto standard for small transfers in Norway.
It was a bigger deal in the US than elsewhere due to how hard it is to do bank transfers there, but the rest of the world is also very keen on the concept.
It was a bigger deal in the US than elsewhere due to how hard it is to do bank transfers there,
Is it? Now I’m curious. Care to elaborate?
Except for apps like PayPal, Venmo, Zelle and Google Wallet, all of which allow you to transfer money to an email address or phone number, there is no convenient electronic way to transfer money from individual to individual in the US. The only other real alternative is handing over cash or writing a check. You can technically do a wire transfer, but those are really designed for stuff like buying a house or something, and usually either cost money, take days to settle, or usually both.
I can’t speak for every other country, but in Norway we’ve at least for a couple of decades taken for granted the ability to just initiate a transfer of money to someone else’s bank account. You just enter the number and amount in your Internet Bank, and it gets transferred free of charge either overnight or instantly. It’s how we’ve done everything my whole adult life.
In the US, the prevalent way to pay rent is still to either write out a physical check or enter the numbers from a check into some web interface which is then somehow able to suck money out of your account. Sometimes a bank will offer to mail the check on your behalf, but it’s still very much a check.
I did not know that and I think it’s wild that the largest economy in the world still operates on such prehistoric methods.
It’s not in the incumbent oligopoly’s interest to innovate.
with all the transactions all around the world can you imagine the money they’re making by doing literally nothing and if this move is successful how much money they stand to lose? I would be surprised if they were not literally talking to hitmen right now.
I can recommend the Aquired Podcast Episode. A 3h long Story of how VISA became the world leader and how much profit they make year over year. It is craaaaazy. We need to get rid of Visa and other US bases payment providers ASAP!
Back before crypto because a speculation vehicle we very nearly got rid of all this bullshit. Unfortunately it just wasn’t convenient and widespread enough before people decided holding on to hashes forever was gonna make them rich.
Would be spectacular if they make an alternative that does not rely on commercial banks so that having a for-profit bank account isn’t required to be able to pay for things electronically. Just like you don’t need that with cash. This is something central banks can provide to the citizens of their country. If commercial banks want people’s money, they better give an incentive. Currently they get it just so people can access the electronic payment systems.
But if course that’s unlikely because commercial banks won’t just let themselves be cut out of the sweet deal they got now.
agreed, this is really low hanging fruit for fixing society in general- services (banking but also insurance (remember Obama’s failed public option)) that everyone needs but are privately run should have competition run by the government that is publicly funded and run with the goal of break-even instead of for profit.
Let the for profit ones try to find reasons to exist then!
Other candidates for a public option: ISPs, ride-sharing services, credit rating agencies, etc etc
At least most European banks are happy to cut out the American middlemen (Visa and Mastercard) since they’re eating part of the cost, and we already have the infrastructure in place and working, it’s called “instant SEPA bank transfer”, most newer accounts offer it for free. The problem is the lack of political will to accelerate that indipendence and to stop hemorraging money (roughly 0.5% per transaction!)
Then as people learn to use it they’ll hopefully also stop using Paypal (another American company) when sending money to someone, or getting tracked in general every single time they use their debit card.
There’s also credit unions.
Knowing your nationality, some Canadian provinces do have a public bank too, like ATB in Alberta.
Yeah, I’m using Meridian in Ontario. While credit unions in Ontario are regulated as nonprofits, I’d still say it’s probably better if Bank of Canada provided a public chequing account and payment processing since it’ll still lower the base cost of participating in the payment system for everyone.
Digital euro is the solution
Do it! Canada will come play too.
We could add credit cards to the Interac system.
That’s a great idea. I’d welcome a new option!
All for it! The orange fucking idiot is fusing the EU.
HEY GUYS! YOULL NEVER GUESS. Portugal already has such a platform! Even Romania has started using it!
Everyone and their cousins have their own platform. That’s the issue. No one wants to standardize on someone else’s alternative so the incumbents reign supreme.
Is a federation of different platforms not possible? Warning: I know absolutely nothing about this.
It’s technically possible, guaranteed.
The problem is capitalism. Every company is too selfish, and every government too neoliberal, to build some at cost publicly-owned globally interoperable payment system.
Even now, the buy EU movement is largely just replacing US-oligarchy-owned services with EU-oligarchy-owned services. It’s better than funding the American nazi party, but it’s not a long term solution.
This is more going into the direction of feudalism than just capitalism. A million tiny realms and every one keen of keeping their population locked in and uninformed about the outside world. I think there’s even a name for it: technofeudalism.
It was bound to happen eventually.
Maybe the @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu is in a good place to enforce a cross-border payment system.
Are you talking about MBway? I want to have the possibility to do it also we a card. Sometimes I don’t take my phone everywhere
No. MBway is the Venmo equivalent, Multibanco is the Visa rival
I’m really confused. I thought multibanco was just what we called the atm! Even went to my wallet to check my banco ctt card. Can ELI5 it to me?
The commonly shared software by all ATMs in Portugal is very cool too though. Lots of additional features like charging your prepaid sim or even paying your taxes too.
Well, it’s also the protocol! If your card has this symbol, it means it has that payment processor! Due to some weird language mixups it is both the atm and the protocol! Managed by SIBS, an interbank organisation
Thanks, this is news to me!
if it doesn’t do card, it’s not an alternative anyway
I was wrong. It’s another thing
The crux is having credit and being able to put blocks on it - say for renting cars.
But I am all for a European alternative. Bring it
I have a friend who works on this project. Still years away, but they are at least thinking very hard of not having US dependencies since the last months. I don’t have much trust in some people involved though (exactly because for many this was not an issue until a few weeks ago).
I fear it will be horrible as long as it does not come close to something like Taler: https://www.taler.net/en/index.html https://www.ngi.eu/ngi-projects/ngi-taler/
Why? I don’t get it, how is it better than SEPA?
When you’re looking at your bank balance you’re seeing bank Euros, for which your bank has to hold a certain percentage of actual (central bank) Euros in reserve (that’s what fractional reserve banking is about: Not just the central bank, also ordinary banks can create money), when you transfer money to another bank the receiving bank will have to make sure that it has enough central bank Euros to back up the recipient’s balance. SEPA is a standard interface and procedure to negotiate such transfers.
The Digital Euro is central bank money, just as bank notes and coins. It’s a (possible) step towards a full-reserve banking system without having to actually keep actual notes and coins around. And the ECB is very aware of this which is why they’re talking so much about limiting how many digital Euros you can hold at one time so the current banking system doesn’t get completely up-ended over night.
…if that doesn’t really answer anything then that’s because money is fucking complex, and how our system works is completely unintuitive. But, essentially, Digital Euros are the same stuff as money under the mattress, just digitally.
I just thought we’ve had this forever, so maybe that’s why I’m confused.
I mean technically, yes, the accounts that banks have with the ECB are exactly this Digital Euro thing: Digital central bank money, it’s not like banks are storing banknotes in vaults nowadays. What’s new is that not just banks will have access to that kind of account.
What I missed before, another thing that this enables is a way for the ECB to do helicopter money. Back during the financial crisis the ECB was battling deflation, lowering interest rates didn’t help as banks were risk-averse and simply didn’t want to lend any more Euros from the ECB, and one dead-simple and ludicrously effective way to battle deflation is by increasing the monetary supply by just giving everyone money. The digital Euro would provide infrastructure for that. Another interesting idea would be to pay out the seigniorage (money the ECB makes by collecting interest from the banks) directly to the people, currently it’s (aside from financing the ECB itself) landing in the coffers of the central banks of the eurozone members, and from there in the general state budget. Wouldn’t be much, like 3-10 Euros a year per Eurozone resident (probably should be citizen but don’t make me look up that number), but at least it would nip certain conspiracy theories ("the state is indebting everyone with fiat money) in the bud.
But all of that is possible now. What exactly are we trying to change?
It’s possible in principle now. But not actually. There’s no button the ECB can press. Quite relatedly, the German government wanted to distribute its income from CO2 taxes to the people and had lots of trouble actually getting bank details for everyone.
