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European banks are beginning to roll out a new digital wallet called wero that initially provides account-to-account payments and is expected to be expanded to retail payments as well.
If so, wero could prove to be a competitive threat to Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc., which dominate European payments, raising the ire of European bank regulators. But in the wake of previous failed ventures to establish a viable Europe-based cross-border payment network, wero’s success is far from guaranteed.
Wero is a venture of the European Payments Initiative, a Brussels, Belgium-based organization founded in 2020 and backed by 16 banks and financial-services companies.
“We have big plans—instant payments across borders to your family and friends is just the start of the wero story,” wero’s Web site says. “Soon you’ll be able to buy in-store and online with your wero digital wallet, and even pay for your subscriptions. Stay tuned as we launch new services and expand to more European countries.”
Consumers can use wero first by finding the service through their banking app, then signing up for the wero digital wallet. After logging in, they can pick the account they want to pay with. Then they choose the mobile-phone number of the person they want to send money to or request money from, and enter the amount. An app-generated QR code also can be used. Payments take only 10 seconds, according to the site.
Wero’s first countries are Germany, Belgium, and France. Germany’s initial financial-institution participants include German Sparkassen and Volksbanken, and Raiffeisenbanken, with Deutsche Bank and Postbank in the dock, according to a Wero news release. The service was scheduled to be available in Belgium late this summer for KBC customers, and this month or in October in France following tests.
“In 2025, wero’s services will be enhanced with new features, including the ability to pay any small professional from the wallet, and also pay merchants online and upon invoices via QR code,” the site says. “This includes the ability for consumers to manage recurring payments for subscriptions or installments, but also to pay in merchant apps at point of sale without going through the cashier, or in any other payment scenario. In-store payments at the cash register will also be added in 2026, along with other capabilities, such as buy now pay later, merchant loyalty, program integration, expense sharing, etc.”
But can wero succeed, or, more specifically. divert transactions from the U.S.-based Visa and Mastercard networks? That’s unclear. Consultant Eric Grover, a close observer of the European payments scene and principal of Minden, Nev.-based Intrepid Ventures, notes that earlier efforts in European Union countries, such as the Euro Alliance of Payment Schemes and Monnet, both failed.
“The [European Payments Initiative] originally envisioned launching a card payment system, digital wallet, and [person-to-person] payments to compete with Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal,” Grover tells Digital Transactions News by email. “Some of EPI’s initial banks withdrew. EPI dropped its plans for a card network and building from scratch.”
Instead, EPI acquired the leading e-commerce payment network in the Netherlands, iDeal, and also Payconiq International, a Luxembourg mobile-payments and fintech company, Grover says, adding that Ideal and Payconiq are providing much of the technology running wero.
“Europe has long wanted to develop a ‘third scheme’ that would become the European answer to Visa and Mastercard, and over the years there have been many projects that have tried and failed to take off,” notes an email to Digital Transactions News from Zil Bareisis, a London-based payments expert at the consultancy Celent. The latest initiative, though it has experienced “‘bumps along the way,” appears to be on a firm footing, he says. “The project has always had the strong backing of the pan-European regulatory and political bodies,” he adds, “such as the European Central Bank and European Commission.”
Still, the new effort may rely more on high-level dislike for the U.S. networks than on how it could be a superior choice for banks and merchants, Grover argues. “When EPI’s CEO, Martina Weimart, touts wero’s and EPI’s ‘European’ bona fides, she’s appealing to [European bank regulators’] unveiled distaste for Mastercard and Visa because they are U.S.-domiciled payment networks, and for European banks to promote wero because their regulators would approve,” Grover says. “I’d rather she sold it because in some respect it [is] a better mouse trap for consumers, merchants, and banks. Notwithstanding cheerleaders in Brussels, EPI’s wero has a steep hill to climb to achieve network critical mass and relevance.”
