Wero: 16 European banks' joint wallet against Visa and PayPal hits 52.5M users

Instant account-to-account payments: P2P transfers, online checkout and in-store QR payments, run by EPI Company SE, a company owned by Europe's largest banks.

Banks' collective reach — millions of customers already inside their apps — can beat Visa and PayPal, if the wallet lives inside banking apps rather than the app stores.

In July 2020, 16 European banks and two acquirers launched the European Payments Initiative with the ECB's public blessing, aiming at a pan-European wallet and card scheme to rival Visa and Mastercard. In 2022 the plan cracked: 20 participating banks walked, and the remaining 13 abandoned the card network to refocus on instant account-to-account payments. EPI picked the name Wero in September 2023, piloted between a German Sparkasse and a French Banque Populaire that December, and launched in Germany on 2 July 2024, with France and Belgium following within four months.

CEO Martina Weimert described the outfit as 'a kind of startup'. Adoption compounded through member banks' own apps: 14M users and 8M transactions by November 2024; processors Nexi, Worldline and Nuvei wired Wero into online checkout during 2025; Revolut joined that June; CTS Eventim became the first major German online retailer in November 2025. The strategic prize landed in January 2026, when the Netherlands began migrating iDEAL — its national scheme — onto Wero. Reuters counted 52.5M users in March 2026; Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and N26 signed on, and Lidl and Decathlon added Wero at checkout in July 2026.

Fragmentation was the opening: each national scheme solved one country, leaving cross-border checkout to US networks for three decades.

Banks already own identity, KYC and the customer relationship, so Wero skipped the cold-start problem that kills consumer payment apps.

SEPA Instant rails make account-to-account payments nearly free, attacking the interchange margin cards live on.

Sovereignty politics became demand: Reuters reported in March 2026 that fears about US payment dependence were boosting the initiative's appeal.

Distribution beats brand: Wero never won an app-store race, it boarded existing banking apps. Shared ownership gave it reach no fintech could buy — and a committee's patience no VC would fund.

As of September 2026 Wero is live in Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg; it launched in Luxembourg on 1 September 2026 by absorbing the Payconiq network, which switches off on 30 September. Every Dutch issuing bank is scheduled to connect in October 2026, with the iDEAL migration targeted for completion by end-2027. Erste Bank and Raiffeisen joined in June 2026 to bring it to Austria; in-store NFC payments are planned for 2027. E-commerce went live country by country through 2026, and Lidl and Decathlon put Wero at German checkout in July 2026.