I have written some posts in the past about how the Banksters instant-payment system, Vipps.no, really sucks:
Norway’s Largest Bank Instant Payment Solution (Vipps.no) Was Down Again…
Vipps Was Down Again (Again): Double-spending? No. 21 X spending? Yes!
There have been some problems where the payment has been withdrawn up to 21 times from the account (i.e. double-spending). They also used an outdated Hash-algorithm until recently. Needless to say, I have not used Vipps much.
Unfortunately, my fellow naive Norwegians often insist on using Vipps, especially if you transact goods on services at Finn.no (the biggest online marketplace in Norway).
In May I tried to send an old classmate 500 NOK to join a reunion and was withdrawn x 3 the amount without he receiving the money. I got the money back after some hours and transferred to his bank account the old school way.
Now I was stupid enough to try and pay for a picture by Vipps.no to a seller at Finn.no. I transferred 7500 NOK to the sellers verified phone number, and the money was withdrawn from my account. The seller received a noticed that the payment was received, but almost instantaneously got the message "payment failed".
I filed a complaint to Vipps 23.09.18, called them and was told that they would contact me soon.
I have stilled not heard anything from them.
I was of course aware of the risks using such a rubish payment system as Vipps.no, but I do not really know if my fellow Norwegians do. It is provocating that they are allowed to have all kinds of ads about how safe and fast Vipps is.
Also, the service is not provided by the bank itself, it is a fourth party, and even a worse solutions than the intermediate banking solutions we have. We need fast, mainstream blockchain payment solutions urgently!
See you after the fork, Steemit friends!
by @janusface
Thank you for your continued support of SteemSilverGold
I never thought they would succeed on it - but they did, Vipps has become the de-facto payment method in Norway during the last couple of years. The biggest Norwegian bank was bleeding money in the start, market penetration and the network effect was the number one priority, profitability was the least priority.
The bad thing is that Vipps isn't for everyone.
Credit cards are used as the backend, and we all know how secure credit cards are.
@janusface,
Yeah Prof, I can remember once (around 9-10 months ago) you talked about this failure story of Vipps. (I have forgot the name of that app)! I think crypto is the solution for this type of failure apps! Specially when STEEM release SMT, I think DAPP will build top of STEEM to solve such cases! I hope you might get your money back!
Cheers~
Let's hope so, and they are not just sent to Cayman Islands or something.
Let's hope so, and they
Are not just sent to Cayman
Islands or something.
- janusface
I'm a bot. I detect haiku.
Never heard of Vipps.. doesn't sound like I want to either. GL getting a refund
It has become the Norwegian de-facto standard for digital payments.
I'm blacklisted from the service, some places I can't even pay the harbour fee
Damn. How do they blacklist you from spending your own money? You'd think if that many people depend on it that it would work right.
Yes, that's the bad thing. I wouldn't mind that they prevent me from using their service if it was just "yet another service". At the other hand, they did actively try to gain market dominance, and they have succeeded to such an extent that it's becoming hard to be without Vipps today - whatever side of the table one is at. We did this fundraising fleemarket event for one weekend, and Vipps had technical problems during three hours of it - we lost significant amounts of turnover due to that, those three hours were quite important for us, and although most people visiting our fleemarket has indeed been smart enough to carry cash with them, it's becoming abnormal with cash.
I have a Polish friend that is sometimes doing street business, like selling sugar spin or transporting people with his bike taxi - and he's also having huge problems as he, as a polish citizen without residence in Norway cannot have a Vipps account. At the other hand, I can hardly think it's legal to do such business in Norway without registering a company and having all the permits in order.
I think it's pretty bad in itself that they are getting such a market dominance, and it's even worse when they can blacklist customers as they like - and even having downtime on their service every now and then.
I think the whole world is moving away from actual cash.. even here in third US it's debit cards .. ...if you don't take them you lose a lot of business.. .the cashless society is quickly approaching
It's just so very much important to avoid monopolies or duopolies ... or any market actors having too much dominance. I seriously got my eyes opened when two companies could just decide "we don't like Wikileaks, and will no longer serve this company", and whoups ... 90% of their income vanished.
Some 20 years ago I would expect Norway to be one of the first countries, as we were relatively early adopters of debit cards (and our national standard BankAxept - also a monopolist, but at least very much cheaper to use than visa/mastercard). Today I'm happy that we're mostly still able to use cash here in Norway (even if it's quite rare). In Sweden one cannot buy beer in the pub without letting Mastercard/Visa know all the details. I observed this sign in Stockholm late Friday night:
very digital and effective project to transfer money quickly