If you're in Europe you can use Curve Pay, PayPal and multiple banks which haven't moved to Google Pay. Alternatively, pay in cash if you want privacy.
Curve Pay refused to give me an account on my Murena FP6 and no local bank offers contactless without google pay, so I'm stuck using a bank card like a caveman.
> Curve Pay refused to give me an account on my Murena FP6
That's probably because /e/OS uses microG, which is vastly inferior to Sandboxed Google Play on GrapheneOS, and has much worse app compatibility.
You should also know that /e/OS is a highly insecure OS, and both Fairphone and Murena are constantly misleading their customers with false marketing and false promises.
MicroG has two huge advantages: you can inspect the code it's running, and you're not tied to Google services. For example you can replace the location service with a privacy respecting one. With the sandboxed play you can't do that, you're stuck with the Google version. The only thing you still need Google for is the push notifications, because the backend of the apps only speaks to them.
It would be amazing if grapheneos would support microG as an option. But they are too much "not invented here" for that to happen.
That's only true for microG itself, not the Google blobs it needs to download and execute in order to function.
GmsCompat on GrapheneOS is also fully open source.[1]
> For example you can replace the location service with a privacy respecting one.
GrapheneOS literally does that.[2] It's currently not perfect in regard to privacy because they are using Apple's Wi-Fi positioning service, but proxying it through their own servers, so Apple never gets the user's IP address or any unique identifiers, and link the location information to any other data. One thing Apple currently does better than most network location providers is the fact that they don't just return position data for one BSSID, they actually give you the data for hundreds of nearby BSSIDs as well[3], which is more private, and means that much fewer requests need to be made to the service.
Because of this aforementioned aspect, Apple's Wi-Fi positioning system is also incredibly easy to scrape. GrapheneOS plans to build their own database, and let users download it, so Wi-Fi positioning could be performed fully locally.
> It would be amazing if grapheneos would support microG as an option. But they are too much "not invented here" for that to happen.
GrapheneOS doesn't support microG, because it has worse app compatibility than Sandboxed Google Play, and requires elevated privileges, unlike SGP.
> they are using Apple's Wi-Fi positioning service, but proxying it through their own servers
My concern with this system is that their proxy is (afaik) compatible with Google's format, which by default is less privacy respecting as it does the location calculation server side and doesn't allow the client to cache.
I'd much prefer if they called out to Apple's servers directly (or through a direct proxy) & cached the AP data locally so over time it will work offline.
It was intended as a light hearted description of how it feels to use a marginally less convenient technology. I now have to ensure I have my bank card with me when I buy groceries which is a tiny bit annoying when you got used to just knowing your phone would cover most things.
I guess that's a technology I never adopted in the first place, so I can't relate. Futzing around with my phone never felt more convenient than pulling out a card. I still needed my wallet for my ID and cash, so a couple cards is hardly a meaningful burden. To each their own, I suppose.
Murena products aren't nearly as compatible with apps as GrapheneOS along with having poor privacy and atrocious security. Instead of improving privacy and security, they greatly reduce both. Instead of taking great care with the privacy of the included services they bundle many invasive ones.
