The OSTHAVEN thesis
From OSTHAVEN’s point of view, the current debates about girocard, wero and the digital euro are very intense, but they are being conducted in the wrong places. Too often, people are looking for a clear winner, when in reality it is about roles, transitions and system logic. Anyone who thinks of the payment transactions of the future as “either/or” is simplifying a highly complex structure and risks making strategic mistakes.
Payment transactions over the next five to ten years will not undergo a radical transformation, but rather a controlled reorganisation. Different systems will coexist because they solve different problems. The real challenge lies not in choosing a system, but in coordinating them intelligently.
The digital euro is the regulatory framework, not a market competitor
The digital euro is often discussed as just another payment method. That is the first fundamental mistake in thinking. The digital euro is not a product that needs to convince users or win over merchants. It is digital central bank money, legal tender and a politically desired infrastructure.
At the same time, it would be simplistic to view the digital euro exclusively as an abstract background infrastructure. As digital central bank money, it is not only a regulatory framework, but also a concrete means of payment in the future. Once fully implemented, it will be a digital equivalent of cash for end users and thus immediately visible in everyday life. Its primary role is regulatory; its payment function is a derivative, not the driving dimension. It is precisely this dual role that makes it conceptually more challenging than traditional payment methods.
Its function is systemic, not commercial. It is intended to ensure that payment transactions retain a public, neutral foundation even in a fully digital world. It is deliberately non-discriminatory, deliberately non-emotional and deliberately not innovation-driven. This is precisely where its strength lies. The digital euro is comparable to cash or SEPA. It is hardly noticeable in everyday life, but without it the system becomes vulnerable.
Anyone who expects the digital euro to replace other methods or dominate the market misunderstands its role. It organises, it stabilises, it creates trust. Competition is not its job. It is a modernisation of the foundation of payment transactions without rebuilding the house.
Wero is a long-overdue everyday product, but not a simple replacement
Wero addresses a different problem than traditional card-based methods. It is not about national resilience or fallback capability, but about suitability for everyday use in an increasingly digital and cross-channel payment world. Wero is consistently account-based and functionally founded on instant payments. This makes it omnichannel-capable from the outset and usable in brick-and-mortar retail, e-commerce and peer-to-peer contexts.
Once completed, wero will be functionally at the POS, in e-commerce and the P2P environment, structurally what girocard wanted to be for many years but was never able to become. While girocard has historically focused heavily on physical POS and can only map e-commerce with considerable additional effort, wero has been designed to be channel-neutral from the outset. This is precisely where its strategic relevance for banks, merchants and payment service providers lies.
In functional terms, wero could be superior to girocard. If wero is accepted nationwide at POS terminals and is priced similarly to girocard, girocard will lose much of its functional justification in day-to-day business. In this respect, wero is the logical challenger to girocard in everyday life.
It is fair to say that wero is not a product that consumers have been waiting for. At the same time, it is precisely the answer that Europe has long been missing in the field of payment transactions. It is precisely this tension that keeps cropping up in many current discussions, not least against the backdrop of the geopolitical situation.
Wero competes less with all existing payment methods at once than with specific functionalities. Credit cards remain relevant where credit or international acceptance is required. Debit cards and girocard fulfil other roles in everyday life. Wero primarily addresses simple, direct account-to-account payments. In everyday life, it quickly becomes apparent that not every payment situation can be sensibly mapped using a single method.
A closer look at the systems also reveals that many differences are less fundamental than they appear in public debate. Historically, the girocard is closely based on SEPA direct debit logic, while wero is functionally based on real-time SEPA credit transfers. Both methods are based on the same European payment infrastructure, but differ in their risk logic and transaction type. This view of the common layer makes it clear that it is less a matter of replacement than of different characteristics on the same basis.
Against this backdrop, the pricing logic may also be critically questioned. Wero is technically based on instant payments and thus on final credit transfers with a very low risk component. The fact that an ad-valorem price is charged for such a transaction is not self-evident and requires clear justification (e.g. through the corresponding added value or services). Long-term acceptance in the retail sector will also depend on how convincingly this pricing logic is explained and embedded in a consistent overall model.
The political discourse partly regards wero as competition to the digital euro, but many observers see the two initiatives as complementary. Private innovations can enrich the government approach and vice versa. Wero is therefore not an alternative to the monetary policy system, but a market-oriented everyday product that builds on existing and future European infrastructures.
At the same time, the establishment and expansion of wero will be a process lasting several years. Acceptance, pricing and integration into existing merchant and banking systems will determine how quickly and to what extent wero actually becomes established in everyday life. This is a challenging task and by no means a self-fulfilling prophecy, regardless of how confidently it is communicated.
The girocard is more than just a payment method, which is precisely why it is so persistent
The debate surrounding the girocard often suffers from a narrow perspective. It is measured by whether it is innovative enough to compete with modern wallet or account-to-account solutions. That is too short-sighted. The girocard is not an innovative product, but an infrastructure system that has grown over decades and is deliberately designed for stability, national control and cost efficiency.
For many network service providers, the girocard is still economically relevant today because it not only enables card payments, but also supports an entire ecosystem. This includes, in particular, proprietary, network-based direct debit and debit logic, which is deeply rooted in the retail sector and enables attractive cost structures. This economy explains a significant part of the girocard’s persistence beyond pure consumer preferences.
In addition, SEPA direct debit is already an account-based A2A procedure that is widely used in retail, highly efficient and extremely cost-effective. Even though it does not compete functionally with modern wallet experiences, it continues to have a strong influence on the economic reality of payment transactions in Germany to this day. It explains why price arguments alone do not automatically lead to a complete system change and why existing SEPA-based procedures remain relevant.
These means of payment cannot be easily replicated in a system such as wero. Wero is standardised, account-based and designed to be pan-European. Proprietary national network logics do not structurally fit into this model. So anyone calling for the end of the girocard is implicitly calling for the end of an entire ecosystem of network service provider value creation, direct debit logic and established business models. Resistance and competition are to be expected here.
Furthermore, the girocard fulfils a systemic role that is underestimated in many debates about the future. It is nationally controlled, technically relatively simple, offline-capable and politically desirable. At a time when payment transactions are increasingly seen as critical infrastructure, these very characteristics are not a disadvantage, but a deliberate security feature. The girocard is not designed to deliver the best user experience, but to continue functioning even when complex real-time systems reach their limits.
From OSTHAVEN’s point of view, it is therefore clear that girocard will most likely lose market share and visibility in everyday life in the future. However, it will not disappear. As long as resilience, national control, established network economies and cost-efficient SEPA-based procedures remain relevant goals, girocard will remain part of the payment system. Not as an everyday product that will dominate forever, but as infrastructural reassurance.
Why integration between wero and girocard is anything but trivial
The idea that wero could simply integrate or absorb girocard sounds elegant. In reality, it is highly complex. Apart from special solutions such as Apple Pay at savings banks, girocard is not actually wallet-compatible today. There is no standardised way to seamlessly embed girocard payments into an A2A or wallet system.
True integration would require far-reaching technical changes. Authorisation, security logic, offline capability, liability models and routing would have to be rethought. Network operators play a central role in this, as they control terminal software, acceptance logic and certification. Without their active participation, any integration is illusory. And even with their involvement, the question arises as to whether such integration would rob the girocard of the very simplicity that makes it so valuable today.
Apple Pay is not a blueprint here. It is an isolated special integration into a closed ecosystem with proprietary interfaces. An open, European system such as wero cannot simply copy this approach, either technically or in terms of governance.
Three realistic development paths instead of simple slogans
Looking at the reality soberly, three possible development paths emerge. The first is functional substitution in everyday life. Wero grows in the POS and e-commerce environment, while girocard continues to operate in parallel. Technically, this is the easiest way, but organisationally it is expensive because parallel structures remain in place.
The second path is partial integration, in which wero acts as the front end and relies on girocard logic in certain constellations. This scenario is extremely challenging from a technical and liability perspective and would require fundamental adjustments to protocols, terminals and governance. Put simply, the girocard would become a funding source for the wero wallet.
The third path is a long-term structural transition of girocard to a wero-compliant logic or an alignment with it. This scenario is theoretically conceivable, but politically sensitive and a long way off. It is more a question of the next decade than the next product generation.
None of these scenarios is trivial. All require time, coordination and a willingness to live with transitional states.
International competition never sleeps
While wero and girocard are being discussed internally, international players have been taking action. Visa Debit and Debit Mastercard are becoming increasingly widespread in German retail thanks to strong growth on the issuing side. This is either because these brands are integrated as co-badges on the girocard or because private banks have removed the girocard as a standard debit card from their account models in recent years. PayPal dominates e-commerce with enormous network effects and deeply ingrained user behaviour.
These systems are convenient, efficient and technically mature. At the same time, they shift governance, pricing and strategic decisions outside Europe. This is precisely where an often underestimated dimension of the debate lies. Wero and the digital euro should also be seen as responses to this dependency. Not as protectionist projects, but as an attempt to maintain Europe’s ability to act in the field of payment transactions. Judge Nicolas Guillou of the International Criminal Court is currently experiencing how unpleasant it can be to be dependent on American services. Since the US government did not agree with the authorisation of the arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it summarily sanctioned him personally, cutting off all access to credit cards, wallets and other accounts held with US providers.
Regulation, liability and costs are changing the rules of the game
With the digital euro, DORA, PSR/PSD3, the upcoming amendment to the Money Laundering Directive and increasing resilience requirements, responsibility in payment transactions is shifting and intensifying significantly. Network operators, acquirers and PSPs will bear (even) more responsibility for liability, stability, security and operations in the future. Payment transactions are becoming less and less a purely transaction business and more of a regulated infrastructure issue. Payment transactions are and will increasingly become a critical infrastructure for our society and the economy.
At the same time, cost pressure is increasing. A2A payments and new wallets are raising merchants’ expectations. Value creation is increasingly being generated through orchestration, transition management and the ability to reduce complexity.
How the world is likely to look in five to ten years
From OSTHAVEN’s perspective, a sober but stable target picture is emerging. The future order of payment transactions will not develop along a single dominant procedure, but as a functional coexistence of several systems on a common infrastructural basis. Wero will grow in everyday life and take over volume where omnichannel capability counts.
The digital euro will function as a stable infrastructure layer in the background and at the same time be available as a public, digital means of payment in everyday life. Its primary role will remain regulatory. It will impress less through user experience than through reliability, neutrality and government guarantees. International schemes will remain relevant for international, credit-based and process-oriented use cases. The girocard will continue to exist, but primarily as systemic reinsurance and as a carrier of specific network and direct debit logic.
The decisive success factor will not be the choice of a single system, but the ability to design transitions intelligently. Merchants do not want fundamental debates. They want stable processes, calculable costs and simple integration.
Conclusion from OSTHAVEN’s perspective
The simplistic demand for the end of the girocard or the simple equation of replacement is too short-sighted. It is an example of how quickly simple solutions are propagated in payment transactions before the problem is really understood.
The payment transactions of the future will not be created by a major overhaul, but by a controlled reorganisation. The digital euro has a special role to play in this reorganisation. It is neither a classic payment method nor a pure background system, but the link between the monetary system and digital use. It is precisely this dual role that makes it conceptually challenging but strategically relevant. Those who view it exclusively as infrastructure or hastily as a new payment method are missing the point. Those who accept and master this complexity will win. Those who dismiss it will be surprised.
If you want to see the forest, you have to stop counting individual trees.