They can also shut down all European payment cards.

True but also most places in the EU accept IBAN which is free (for individuals at least) and now relatively fast (seconds for the same bank, minutes or hours at most otherwise) so payment can still be done without MasterCard/Visa. It's inconvenient for a croissant but for anything slightly more expensive and that you don't need within seconds it's not too bad.

Most banks in Belgium (e.g. Bancontact, Wero, Pom) or Sweden (Swish, was renting ice skates with it just this winter) have their own system but typically only nationals use that. It's still enough for shops to get instant payments without those US cards issuers.

TL;DR: yes and it's wrong, but also IBAN works.

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OhMeadhbh 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe not all of them, but certainly a few large, popular ones. You bring up a good point though, it seems surprising that Wero/PEPSI don't have more momentum. Maybe Europeans hate their continental neighbors more than American financial conglomerates.

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lxgr 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The EU might have slept on Russia having to urgently come up with its own payment systems after the 2014 Crimea annexation (which in turn enabled it to deal with the complete Visa/Mastercard exit in 2022) because political goals were aligned and transatlanticism was still alive and well. But they've been wide awake ever since ICC employees have been personally sanctioned by the US as well [1].

Big ships turn slowly, but I give it at most two more years until at least one pan-European retail payment scheme (cards, QR, or maybe the "digital Euro") has been regulated into existence.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/feb/18/international-cr...

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sudahtigabulan 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We just don't know much about one another.

I never really thought about it until I saw this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45993140

	▲	reddalo 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Unfortunately, each European country has a different "national" payment method. Swish in Sweden, MobilePay in Denmark/Finland, iDEAL in the Netherlands, etc. Of course you can't sign up to a specific country payment system if you're not a resident there. And systems from different countries don't work with each other. Luckily, there's now an initiative called EPI [1], which is an alliance that wants to make all these apps interoperable and call them "Wero" [2]. There are two problem with this system though: - Wero insists on making you use your own bank app to send/receive payments. That's a terrible choice, because most bank apps are huge behemoths that are slow and heavy. People don't want to use them: PayPal is so much quicker and easier. They should develop a new, lightweight app that only does payments. - The Italian member of EPI is "BancomatPay", which nobody uses. Sure, Bancomat is a huge company in the debit cards world, but no sane person uses BancomatPay in their daily life (also, BancomatPay forces you to use your bank app). In Italy, Satispay is way bigger and widely accepted, especially in the North (i.e. richest) part of the country. I'm surprised Satispay didn't get into EPI. [1] https://epicompany.eu/ [2] https://wero-wallet.eu

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PunchyHamster 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Just big systems having even bigger inertia