For the uninitiated: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/poob-has-it-for-you

also relevant is the end of this SNL sketch from this last weekend - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS97AzfKp3U

And this SNL sketch from a few decades ago:

https://youtu.be/NWIlScfHwOU?si=64xMCQf8MHtho44H

This one still makes me laugh!

How mind-numbingly lame. Just another dime a dozen meme.

> > A Frenchman using Wero will be able to transfer money to a Spanish friend on Bizum, with the same simplicity as a domestic payment.

SEPA Instant Payments also solves that.

Yes, the only difference is that you need to communicate your bank account number and likely your legal name.

Wero doesn't change that as it's just another interface for SEPA instant payments. In its current version, it just adds phone numbers as an alias. Via the phone number you can also find out their full name and, after a transaction, their account number, as long as they've enabled Wero for their account.

> you need to communicate your bank account number

in Latvia we need to do this for domestic payments anyway. We use IBAN even for domestic payments..

> and likely your legal name.

not mandatory. If provided, the bank tells you whether the recipient name matches the account, but if not, you can proceed with the payment anyway.

They made it mandatory in NL not long ago iirc, or at least the validation now is and the bank doesn't let me leave the field blank. It does seem to be okay with variants of the name

I, too, would prefer to just be able to give people a random number to send money to. Isn't that a GDPR requirement anyway: data minimisation? Can they legally require this beyond their 90% of the law (that is, custody of the thing I'm trying to move)?

which... isn't really a problem for legal transfers, is it

not the case in Czechia, only thing you need is bank account number and bank code, nothing else

Wero and Bizum are built on top of SEPA anyway

I doubt so, because i need to type god-knows-how-many characters by hand, while visually separating them into chunks by 4, then explicitly authorize the receiver. Oh, and explicitly authorise the country

> then explicitly authorize the receiver. Oh, and explicitly authorise the country

I've never had to do any of this, and I quire frequently send SEPA payments from Latvia.

Well i am in France, and what I said is factually true for some banks; at least mine (LCL)

While your complaint is valid, no need to separate in chunks, there's a checksum.

> SEPA Instant Payments also solves that.

Even more than now there is a QR code format for SEPA Instant Payments. Some invoice have a QR code and when it is scanned with a bank app, the fields for a bank transfer are prefilled. IBAN, amount, etc...

We just need an app to generate this QR code for the amount one wants to request.

In countries where instant SEPA through QR codes are popular that "app to generate this QR code" is your bank app. All of them can do it.

The stupid problem here is that as EU was pushing SEPA countries themselves came up with the QR payload formats. And since it was first introduced and popular in more eastern europe countries... the western countries can't just follow the already popular codes but have to change the payload format for pointless reason (human readability). There is huge NIH syndrome with German/French/Netherlands tech.

So now you have one format that uses new lines as deliminator, other format uses : as deliminator and another that's not human readable at all and it's binary.

Of course all of them are using same SEPA and essentially just prefill the information into the bank app. I wouldn't be surprised if banks just gave up and parsed the data in all the formats, picking the most reasonable automatically.

Frenchman here, living in Spain. This speaks to me on many levels. Bizum is so integrated in my daily life in Spain, that I wished my french friends had it when we need to transfer money between each other. Looks like we're going in that direction. Phenomenal

LOL thank you domain squatters. I can't think of any other reason why startups often always have the most ridiculous names.

It’s not just the domain squatters. They have to find a name they can get with Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc in addition to the domain.

A lot of these are puns/vague money sounding names in different languages.

Wero has got to be the worst of the bunch, though. An awkward combination of "we" and "euro" combined with "vero". At least the other pooq/wolo/snivum/rumio like names aren't trying to hard.

As terrible as these are, at least they aren't just random short English words.

And at least its not just a random letter in the English language too! (looking at you X)

I hate random English words as company names. The other day I saw a company called Runway and it seemed interesting. Turns out there's quite a few companies called Runway or with a product called Runway, in the same industry.

Same with Bolt.

And I hate that Meta is now the company name so I can't look for meta stuff without also getting results about the company formerly known as Facebook.

Apparently it's the same as the Dutch payment system but in some languages that "iDEAL" had wrong associations.

I don't think it explains the "cat walks on keyboard" brand names for cheap Chinese goods on Amazon.

The gibberish brand names on Amazon are a formulaic way to streamline trademark registration which Amazon requires for some features on their selling platform.

https://stemerlaw.com/2025/07/16/why-are-amazon-brand-names-...

I wonder if a name with CJK characters can be trademarked?

Yes, they can. I suspect latin characters are used for practical reasons: compatibility with US expectations... some systems only accept latin characters and certainly your US customers wouldn't be able to search for chinese language characters.

Nothing more reliable than good old SPLARGLE kitchenware

I got some of those from Ikea the other day, decent for the price

I think they just use random generators to make a 5 digit string and ship it

Every single 3 and 4 letter .com domain has been registered for at least 20 years, not a single one is available to register. Domains aren’t the reason for names like “wiro” and “tubi”.

Yeah its a bit bad LLLL.com are all taken I do have k4qr.com but its LNLL.

On the other hand though, there are still .org and .net if you are lucky.

I usually just use tld-list.com to find all the domains from a particular keyword and then you can buy one which can be nice (eg: I bought https://mirror.forum this way)

that being said, you can find the registration prices to sometimes be cheap but the renewal prices can be double the .com or more (which is around 8-10$)

For my domain of https://use.expert its renewal is around 40-50$ (4x .com price) but probably worth it as I really love it but I might drop a few domains like mirror.forum as its 20$ just doesn't feel worth it to me and I will just auction it in some forums, not really that sure at the moment

So TLDR: you can find some good names if really need be but the idea generally for these startups is to do something similar to what I am saying and then buy the .com later if/when they have the funds, personally I am not that big of a fan of .com but I do realize that I have more chances of remembering .com's because that's the default expectation of the internet.

funny enough LLLL.com redirects to qq.com [the Chinese portal]

Sounds totally fine to me. I guess just like there are many Mastodon instances: mastodon.social, fosstodon, infosec.exchange, mas.to, etc., but one protocol by which they talk to each other.

I’m 50. All startup news looks like this:

“Payments via Zoosha? K-smog and Batboy launch new startup.”

It's better than that trend of taking English words and removing the final vowels before "r" or some other consonant.

I'm not actually sure Wubi and Tubu are better than something like Cashr tbh

Or adding "-ly" at the end.

"Just use Cashly!" "Download Crditly"

It's bonkers to me that Box and Square are two totally different companies in two totally different industries

then add a second r and it's suddenly piracy or torrent related!

Obliteratr

Obltrtr

Vowels are _so_ 1900s

We're appending "AI" now to English words, to match the Anguilla TLD that are fashionable and will never become dated.

- Mike, co-founder of MoistAI

Ah yes, that hot trend from 2010.

I can feel Galactus's pain.

ahahah!

so true. those names are silly. also, French and Spanish can already send money for free via IBAN / SEPA

That's not the point at all. Currently I'm using paypal to send money to friends when we split dinner or share other costs. I'd like to use a similar European service instead and not go through a ceremony to open my banking app, initiate transfer, write the recipient's IBAN, confirm and wait a day for the transfer to take place.

You shouldn't need to wait for a day, instant transfers have been a thing for a while now. Unless you're in terribly bad luck to be stuck with one of the few banks that are lagging behind.

International money transfers, even between currencies, now take seconds whenever I do them.

The "map phone number to bank account" services do make this whole thing a lot easier, but on the other hand I kind of don't want to help scammers by giving them the option to look up what bank they need to pretend to be before dialing a number.

Entering an IBAN once in a blue moon is a cheap price to pay to not be the US's bitch imho

I split bills via Revolut?

I could do it via IBAN and it would mostly (not to all banks) instant.

My bank also allows payments via a phone number now. Tested once and it works, but everyone's used to Revolut for bill splitting here in Romania.

> write the recipient's IBAN,

You can do it once, and save in in your bank app.

> wait a day for the transfer to take place.

Isn't instant SEPA required to be supported by all banks now?

> You can do it once, and save in in your bank app.

I try not to send or write my IBAN just anywhere. With things like Direct Debit, I treat it with care. Sharp contrast with Paypal, where you can use your email address or even have a paypal.me page that does not expose your email at all.

> Isn't instant SEPA required to be supported by all banks now?

Yes, and yet I think it's not supported by all banks. Especially those that are not in the Euro area. One more thing - many people including me are to this day not informed or aware if instant payments are charged by banks or not. I honestly don't know.

Good point about Direct Debit, thank you.

Wero and Bizum mostly just associate phone numbers to IBANs and perform instant SEPA transfers underneath. The benefit is that you only need the other's phone number to send them money, usually already in your contact list, instead of them sharing you a twenty-something digit number.

Reminds me of PingIt.

https://www.retailbankerinternational.com/comment/barclays-r...

Ah yes, Pierre will surely have no issues paying for his baguette et croissant by filling in the boulangerie's IBAN on his mobile phone and waiting 15 minutes for them to check receipt.

We have instant bank transfers in Europe. And you can scan a QR code for payment via IBAN.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPC_QR_code