The largest payment systems in the world, in China [1] [2], India [3], Brazil's Pix [4] etc, leverage QR codes and other non card primitives for moving value. You can encode EMV [5] in a QR code [6].

> Wero doesn’t seem to be that. Am I missing something? Does making a new direct alternative to Visa/MC doesn’t make sense for the EU? If so, why?

To avoid US government control of your payments and US corporate payment processor extraction of value via your payment flows. How do you avoid someone else controlling your infra? You instantiate, operate, and maintain your own infra. Brazil runs their instant payment system Pix for ~$10M/year, for example. The cost is very reasonable to do so.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAChinese/comments/1qgq6ya/why_di...

[2] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chinas-digital-payments-r...

[3] https://easebuzz.in/explainers/upi/upi-qr-code/

[4] https://dev.to/woovi/how-does-pix-qrcode-work-5e3k

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV

[6] https://www.w3.org/2020/Talks/emvco-qr-20201021.pdf

Digital euro clears key hurdle as EU seeks to break free from U.S. credit cards