Hacker News Reader

Comment by Freak_NL | Hacker News Reader

The response from EPI/Wero in that thread is troubling:

https://github.com/PrivSec-dev/banking-apps-compat-report/is...

I really hope this doesn't mean other Dutch banks will follow suit. It's already quite impossible to actually contact someone at the bank who can understand the issue if it's on the technical side. I have no idea how I would even start to broach this topic with ABN Amro.

View on HN

I thought that one of the goals of Wero was to become less dependent on US technology (Paypal). By requiring you to use either Android or iOS it seems to me as if that is more of a marketing ploy than anything else. As multiple other banks that support Wero however run on non-Google Android I think it is more likely that whoever wrote that message just doesn't know what they are talking about.

There will be no independence of US tech as long as everyone in europe has google or apple in their pocket and most administrations have windows on their PC. But, at least in germany, ruling parties are very slow to notice this.

We had Nokia, destroyed by Microsoft back in early 2010s.

They destroyed themselves by missing the window for starting an entirely new smartphone ecosystem. They should've either released Lumia years earlier before the iPhone/Android duopoly got established, or made their OS capable of running Android apps (e.g. by being Android).

Exactly. I'm very disappointed in Wero, and I hope they really start working on support for other OSs.

This is a continent that thinks they should run everything on Azure...

Hey, let's be fair here. Wero uses AWS instead! ;)

source: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Sovereign-payment-service-Wero-...

Just how it goes, vote with your wallet.

My mortgage was with a bank that had a website but no app and I was happy, and then they merged with another bank and only had an app and no website and I was not at all happy (but the bank they merged with also had their own mortgage product with both app and website and I do not know why they didn't migrate to using that platform). I swiftly moved to a bank that incidentally had a lower interest and both a competent app and website, and I noted to the previous merged bank that the reason I was leaving is that they did not accommodate me. Whether that feedback was heard, I'm unsure.

It was heard and will be taken into work around 2030 once we stop embargoing MCP as a dangerous technology

Not an option if all banks follow suit. If this trend continues you would only switch to a bank who hasn't yet locked down their app yet.

Hopping banks is easy for just savings, but a lot of work and inconvenience for your standard payment accounts, and that's ignoring additional services like mortgages and insurance.

I love how people think "vote with your wallet" is an option on most "vote with your wallet" issues. If people could vote with their wallets they wouldn't have to, would they?

Vote with your vote for politicians for common sense regulations that favor the consumer at the expense of everything else.

Indeed. It also fights symptoms rather than the underlying issue - that Google Play Integrity is an anti-competitive method that Google uses to shut out competition. The fact that Google-certified phones that are months behind on critical security updates (or even have malware in there updates as a recent case) do get a pass, shows that it is not really about security, but about destroying competition in the smartphone ecosystem as early as possible.

The solution is not voting with your wallet, but either leveraging the DMA or drafting new laws that counter this.

Either Google should be forced to approve secure alternatives like GrapheneOS or companies should be required to also implement AOSP attestation. Or alternatively, remote attestation should be banned completely, but I can understand the argument that it serves some legitimate uses.

I filed a complaint at ACM (Dutch authority consumer market) about this a while ago since you need to be a google partner to be approved and that is anti competitive. They were very interested in this and even asked for a follow-up. I think they have an open issue about this. So it is a good idea to contact your national authority.

> vote with your wallet

That's not good enough, you also need to convince regular people to do the same. Your vote alone will not achieve anything.

This is how it should work, but not how it does. Dutch banks don't pass down increases in interest rates simply because the risk of losing customers is so low [1]. Dutch consumers don't want, can't be bothered, or have such loyalty to their bank of choice, that even a criminally-low rate won't convince them to switch bank

[1]: https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/acm-savings-rates-lag-beh...

Dutch consumers don't want, can't be bothered, or have such loyalty to their bank of choice, that even a criminally-low rate won't convince them to switch bank

It is also just very hard in practice. A lot of people have their mortgages, savings that are locked for years, etc. at a bank. Also, switching a bank also impacts other family members if you have shared accounts, etc.

In this particular case it's also not fully clear yet whether Wero is starting to enforce this. If that happens to be the case, it's only a matter of time before other banks also start requiring Play Integrity for Wero transactions.

It's not hard to just move your savings. A lot of people do that actually; just keep the standard banking account for daily payments and all other services, and put savings in bank-managed ETFs, time deposits, or savings accounts with other banks (I do all three).

It's not hard to move your savings but due to some "coincidence" all Dutch banks keep their interest rates within a very narrow band (some advertise with higher interest rates you get for 6 months). Dutch people are very averse to banks outside of the country due to the icesave affair and not trusting that for example Estonia or Italy will actually be able to make them whole in case of a crisis. So in the end are you moving your money from Rabobank to Andolubank (whoever they are) for 0.3% more interest? Probably not.

Savings rates on all savings accounts are useless. Rabobank even has a managed passive investment account that functionally works like a savings account if you really don't want to use funds yourself [0], I think ING does too. If you do use funds or invest otherwise it doesn't matter which bank you use.

0: https://www.rabobank.nl/particulieren/beleggen/rabo-beheerd-...

Reminds me of the tweet i saw: "My bank, who passed all 14 interest rate increases on to my mortgage, and none of them on to my savings account interest, is currently sending me tips on how to spot financial scammers"

The good news is: no need to stick to expensive and crappy Dutch banks. Plenty of foreign options.

I've completed my transfer this year. I am waiting a few more months to close my Dutch bank account (with the parent company of ASN). Good riddance.

If Wero becomes the pan-european solution for online payments it is slated to become, then no European bank will be exempt from this. Given that as a European your government covers up to €100,000 placed at any European bank in case that bank goes tits-up, you are likely to end with a European bank in any case.

> If Wero becomes the pan-european solution for online payments

It most likely won't, because people want the security that cards offer when they order online. Wero could be good or even great for other things, but not for making online purchases from another country.

The Dutch do nothing but use Ideal, Wero's predecessor, for online purchases. People very much want to simply transfer money from their bank to a shop, just as they can with a debit card. Most Wero transfers will be to shops in your own country, but don't underestimate its potential. Valve offers Ideal on Steam, and has done so for years now, and they can probably give some very appealing insights into how that unlocked a massive amount of gamers in the Netherlands.

Nobody is worried that Valve isn't going to deliver what you purchase on Steam. Likewise few people are worried that they're going to be scammed by a well recognized national brand. That's why I specifically mentioned cross-country online shopping, where methods like Wero which offer no benefit at all to customers will have difficulties finding success. Unless there's a massive media campaign to tell people what they should do.

Shopping online beyond the national borders is a fraction of all shopping done online, and when it is done, people gravitate to big platforms like Amazon or Steam.

What Wero will do, is allow a German citizen to order stuff in a German shop, and an Italian citizen to order stuff in an Italian shop first and foremost. After that, it will allow them to pay for stuff on Vinted (people already buy second hand clothes across borders this way!) or Steam.

It will also make buying stuff in different European countries easier, but that is only a tiny percentage. The winners here are citizens being able to shop around further, and shops with dedicated national versions of their store to sell stuff easily to citizens in whichever country they decide to port their shop to (in addition to simply serving those who are fine with their shop in English or another language).

If you only know credit cards, you won't see the benefit, but Europe is predominantly a place of debit cards and local payment methods.

The comment I originally replied to and the one I originally wrote concerns cross-border online payments only. As I initially mentioned, Wero could be good or even great for other uses. But almost all European countries already have their own similar systems for instant bank transfers, and have had them for about a decade now.

> It will also make buying stuff in different European countries easier, but that is only a tiny percentage.

Why and how? It's already extremely easy and online shopping is mature and accessible across borders.

> If you only know credit cards, you won't see the benefit, but Europe is predominantly a place of debit cards and local payment methods.

Debit cards have exactly the same advantages as credit cards. Most importantly purchase protection, which bank transfers don't have.

What are you switching to?

you can't just open bank account in the country where you don't live

> is troubling

No, it is not troubling, it is realistic for a service with high expectations and reliability expected, on tight schedules/resources

Reply on news.ycombinator.com