Decathlon Germany adds Wero payment option to decathlon.de website

Wero is such a valuable asset for Europe and couldn't have come at a better time.

It's built on the excellent SEPA system, which standardized bank transfers and "Lastschrift" in Europe. SEPA itself got a huge upgrade last year with mandatory instant transfers that cannot cost more than standard transfers between European checking accounts.

Both of those allowed Wero to happen as a final abstract top layer, meaning: the UX of sending money to an email address with the security and convenience of bank transfers. And everything is built collaboratively on top of European banking infrastructure.

No account necessary and no private american conglomerates can delete that account.

And before some says: "Well, now the government controls everything!": They already did, since... Ever. Now its one less entity with that access and one that can be (hopefully) controlled and changed by a majority.

> The Wero app can be installed on any mobile device or tablet running iOS 17.4 or later, or Android 9 or later. We recommend updating your device to the latest version of its operating system for maximum performance and security.

> It is not possible to send Wero payments to friends & family via a web browser or on a computer

Truly independent from US companies ... If you don't have an iOS or an Android device, you are just stuck, once again

I recently bought something from fahrrad.de and was surprised to see Wero as an payment option. I don't know what I expected, but scanning the QR code and acknowledging the payment in my banking app worked without any issues. The whole process had a very "snappy" feeling without waiting for any of the usual spinners and redirects. So... thumbs up, I guess?

Decathlon is pretty neat and technologically advanced actually, so not surprising news for them to adopt Wero.

In eastern European stores they use RFID for every product, so you just throw stuff in a bin without scanning and can self check faster than usual self scan.

Well I have not tried throwing in a bike in a bin or a dumbbell, but I presume it works for 99% of stuff.

Curious what they pay for RFID, last I checked it is about 5-6 cents per item for small quantities.

I need to use this thread to mention the Polish payment system Blik. It is one of the most convenient payment systems out there - you generate an ephemeral 6-digit code in your banking app, copy it to the vendor, confirm, done. Works P2P with phone numbers, too.

Interestingly, it would be the perfect system for payments using AI agents - the agent tries to pay, asks user to provide 6-digit code, submits payment request. User confirms via banking app. Done.

This type of thing (scan QR code) is how basically all payments were done when I was recently in China, via wechat or alipay (either you show your QR code for big shops, or scan their QR code for small shops / vendors. They can just print them out if they want and hang a copy).

I found it superior to other systems I've used in basically every way. Particularly for small market stalls -- I scan their QR code, I enter how much I want to send them. They never get my details, I don't have to trust they didn't fat-finger the price. It also makes it amazingly easy to send money to friends, just scan their code and send them their share of dinner.

Wero shows that marketing is everything. It's just regular bank transactions with a much larger fee. We could have had EPC QR codes and similar completely free technologies instead.

God I wish the US had a digital payment system that we could all basically agree on. Having Apple Pay vs Google Pay vs Zelle vs Paypal vs Venmo vs all the others is annoying as hell.

The article headline screams Claude to me, is that just me? I am as bullish as can be on AI usage, but I’m either hallucinating myself or this is the classic AI “not this, but that” phrase that I keep reading all day.

> Decathlon didn’t just add a new payment button to its German checkout page. It handed European banks their first big-box sporting goods test case at a moment when competition in digital payments is intensifying and the push for EU-made payment infrastructure is growing.

Why is this news? In the Netherlands the ideal system is already replaced by Wero ? What am I missing.

> competition in digital payments

What competition? Here in the Netherlands, iDeal (which is already renamed to Wero) has almost no competition. Perhaps PayPal a few percent

I always use Paypal because they have buyers protection, and this has already saved me countless of times.

Would like to see if this is also offered in the Wero ecosystem?

Related:

Lidl Introduces the European Payment Method Wero in Germany

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49060205

It sucks that decathlon basically left Canada after a short trial run. I think it really came down to crappy marketing overall.

If European retailers manage to link Wero payments to loyalty schemes, then everyone will benefit and this could eventually become something. Still, no thread to legacy credit card rails (Mastercard, Visa) for many years. The industry doesn’t expect hockey stick growth AFAIK

such a slow roll-out, Brazil implementation of Pix was ridiculously faster.

I've also recently seen a Wero option somewhere in Germany. Probably was the transport authority in Berlin, or an air company, I can't quite remember. Haven't seen it in France yet, though.

I'd like the EU to enforce a payment-system agnostic checkout for webshops, which gives me the same payment options everywhere and which also adds a layer of privacy.

After the pandemic, Germany truly picked up cashless payments. But still a long way to go, especially to prevent tax evasion

In Spain we can pay using Bizum on many websites, including Amazon.

Europeans are anti American nowadays.

Isn't Wero just another proprietary app that requires a Google or Apple smartphone? Can I use it from my web browser like I can with PayPal?

I get that this is a good thing and long overdue - but the excitement here just underscores for me how expectations in Europe for Europe doing anything truly cutting edge are low.

iDeal is amazing and it's great it's coming to the rest of Europe, even if they gave it a worse name.

Here in the Benelux it's the go-to payment option for ecommerce.

I think this will be a much bigger threat to Visa and Mastercard than the oft-promised digital Euro.

Credit card companies and services like PayPal extract large amount of wealth, mostly to provide a service (instant payment) for which they are no longer technically necessary.

New systems like Wero (or similar ones already widely established in India or Brazil) are based on instant bank transfers rather than a credit card company that acts as a middle man.

Presse release: https://einblicke.decathlon.de/presse/pressekit/digitale-inn...

Why do Germans corrupt their own language with that weird pig-German?

On the German Wero site[1], the copy not only uses utterly gratuitous and even made up fake English words where there are perfectly adequate German words, e.g., "senden", hero, support, business, etc.; but the worst part is that they mess up or maybe can't even realize anymore that the German word for hero in "Der absolute Hero für dein Geld!" could have produced a far superior phrase through a rhyme, i.e., "Der absolute Held für dein Geld!". It's nonsensical to use "hero". Why would you use "hero"?

What are you doing, Germans? "Senden" is not a word. You just made that up! Or should I say "you just hooberdoobered it" since we are just making up gibberish words? We don't say "senden"... why are you saying "senden"?? It's like a traumatized child making up a gibberish language to live in a fantasy world. It's not healthy.

It's also really rather discriminatory towards older people who may not know this weird hipster pig-german made up gibberish.

For context for Americans or other actual English speakers, imagine if an American spoke like this:

"Come on, Niemcy, use your own słowa. You are worth it. Leave other ludzie's words for them to use. Have some szacunek. It's kind of żałosne actually. Get it together już." It's Polish, btw.

Does that convey the level of cringe? It's weird!

[1] https://wero-wallet.eu/de/uber,