Wero goes e-commerce: The European payment solution between challenges and ambitions

The European Payments Initiative (EPI) is about to enter the merchant business with Wero: In autumn 2025, EPI wants to enter the acceptance business in Germany with its first pilot merchants in e-commerce.  But is this ambitious schedule realistic? Time to take stock: Where does Wero currently stand, what hurdles still need to be overcome, and what are the prospects for success of the new European payment instrument?

From P2P to e-commerce

Until now, private users have been able to use the Wero app or their bank’s enhanced online banking app to initiate payments and transfer money in real time to other Wero wallet holders as part of account-to-account transactions. Technically, this system is based on SEPA instant transfers.

The first real-time transfer with Wero was conducted almost two years ago: on 20 December 2023, €10 was transferred from Sparkasse Elbe-Elster to Banque Populaire – Caisse d’Epargne in France. According to its own announcements, Wero currently has over 40 million users, mainly in France and Belgium. The current “high number of users” is largely based on acquisitions of national payment schemes, such as Paylib in France, Payconiq in Belgium and iDeal in the Netherlands. In Germany, the Sparkasse, Volksbank and Raiffeisenbank savings banks, as well as many PSD and Sparda banks, have already set up a Wero interface in their banking apps. According to current information, the instant payment solution has around 1.8 million users in this country. ING has now also expanded its online banking to include Wero functionality. This means that at least the major retail banks are now offering Wero on the market, even if the banks in question have not yet made a big deal of it in terms of marketing. Perhaps they fear the “Haribo effect”, which still resonates as a negative example of a well-known market entry into the German world of acceptance.

Now, with its entry into e-commerce, Wero is setting its sights on the next milestone. However, entering the merchant business is anything but trivial from a technical, legal and organisational point of view. Unlike the peer-to-peer (P2P) payments mentioned above, where money flows from one private individual to another, this requires an acceptance point and thus an additional entity – the acquirer.

Acquirers play a central role in the merchant business in various respects:

• Assumption of liability: The acquirer – and not the Wero operator EPI or the consumer banks – assumes liability for payment defaults (similar to the credit card business).
• Contractual relationship with the merchant: The acquirer negotiates terms and conditions with the merchant on its own responsibility.
• Settlement logistics: The acquirer collects and bundles SEPA Inst payment receipts on behalf of the merchant, as the latter prefers collective transfers with separate, structured and consolidated information to thousands of individual bookings.

The challenge: instant payment meets batch processing

And this is precisely where Wero faces a key challenge in entering the merchant business: while this new payment instrument is designed for the immediate processing of individual transactions (remember SEPA Instant), acquirers work on the principle of batch processing – they collect transactions over a defined period of time, process them in batches and then transfer collective amounts to their merchants. Authorisation and authentication are separate from the actual flow of money and are often processed on platforms that are not directly connected to each other technically.

This tension between Wero’s instant payment principle and the collective processing of acquirers leads to challenges in the back-office processing of payment service providers in some areas, the solution to which is often not trivial. Since Wero’s scheme operator, EPI Company, has “outsourced” the actual payment transfer activity to the account-holding banks or acquirers, the scheme itself is not a SEPA participant. Inevitably, certain transaction data processed on the scheme host is not transferred via the SEPA framework ( ). This in turn leads to the need for adjustments on the part of the acquirers, who sometimes have to obtain additional data from other sources that are not SEPA-oriented in order to verify incoming payments and then assign them accurately to a merchant. However, it is precisely these nuances in the data processing of Wero transactions that have led to increased effort on the part of the affiliated acquirers in recent months.

For these reasons in particular, procedural challenges are increasingly emerging that could delay the major entry into the merchant business. In cooperation with the account-holding banks and affiliated acquirers, EPI is initially sticking to the 2025 launch date. It can therefore be assumed that although the first merchants will go live, the processing of all possible transaction events may be semi-automated or perhaps even limited.

Four reasons why Wero can still be successful

Despite these challenges, we believe that Wero has a good chance of succeeding in the market. Several factors support this view:

1. Strategic acquisitions as a ramp up booster: EPI has learned from the experience of previous initiatives that building a payment system from scratch is difficult. To avoid having to start from zero, EPI has therefore specifically acquired established national payment systems, including iDeal in the Netherlands and Payconiq in Belgium. Rumour has it that other local payment methods could follow suit and be taken over by Wero or merged into Wero, thereby strengthening market penetration. Through possible acquisitions or takeovers, EPI can expand its user base to several million European consumers who already pay with the respective national systems. Currently, the transaction figures communicated by EPI are based primarily on these acquisitions from the P2P business. However, market penetration is also being pursued through strategic partnerships, with the announced partnership with the European Payments Association (EuroPA) playing a particularly important role. Founded in June 2024, EuroPA is an association of leading national payment systems from several European countries, including Bizum (Spain), Bancomat (Italy), MB WAY (Portugal) and Vipps MobilePay (Scandinavia). This collaboration will create a network that will make existing national payment systems interoperable across borders for the first time.
2. A European alternative in digital payments: Wero is “Made in Europe”, which could represent a competitive advantage that should not be underestimated. Many European payment users and consumers are increasingly sceptical about the data collection practices of American tech giants. Wero is positioning itself as a European alternative that is subject to the strict European GDPR and promises a higher level of data protection and financial sovereignty. Similarly, EPI is committed to complying with EBA regulations, thereby preventing any disputes arising from non-compliance, which in the past have been fought out at length in European courts in the case of American payment giants.
3. SEPA Instant trump card: Wero is always directly associated with SEPA Instant transfers, and the EPI marketing department never tires of promoting this process as a trump card. Considering the P2P aspect of this payment method, this is certainly a significant advantage over other payment systems. However, if we focus on the acceptance business, i.e. where merchants offer their customers Wero as a payment method, the picture is somewhat different. Due to the intermediary “acquirer”, who is responsible for merchant payouts, merchants no longer receive Wero payments in real time. They do receive real-time information from the acquirer that the payment has been successfully processed and can therefore adjust their shipping processes accordingly. However, they only receive the corresponding funds during the payout cycle agreed with the acquirer. Strictly speaking, there is no real-time transfer between the Wero wallet holder and the merchant, but a successfully confirmed transaction is final in real time, and the merchant can therefore be sure of receiving their money and, for example, immediately prepareor ship the goods.

The payout model described above, with the help of the acquirer, complies with EPI rules, as the acquirers receive the amounts resulting from Wero payments in real time. However, the acquirer does not take advantage of this situation (by buffering funds for its own benefit), but rather meets a demand from the merchant, who is reluctant to receive large numbers of individual transfers to their account and then have to post and reconcile them. This is a task that is also performed by the acquirer for other payment methods.

4. Financial strength of shareholders: EPI has financially strong shareholders who are willing to continue investing in Wero. These shareholders are not only investors, but often – especially on the consumer side – also direct scheme participants. This concept is also a bit of a blessing and a curse at the same time. The advantage of “employing” shareholders as scheme participants is that they can secure their own investment through targeted adjustments to the scheme. On the other hand, however, the continuing imbalance between acquirers and consumer banks repeatedly leads to one-sided decisions that are not conducive to the imminent launch into the world of acceptance. The costs associated with a Wero payment in e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retail are one of the most important issues for merchants. This is where EPI scores points in two areas:
   1. There are rumours and interviews suggesting that transaction costs are comparatively low compared to international payment systems, but also compared to national payment systems. Certain nuances still exist, as participating acquirers can influence sales prices at their own discretion.
   2. The risk of payment default is significantly lower, as Wero payments are always authorised in advance by the wallet holder, as this is the only way to generate a SEPA instant transfer.

A corresponding advantage should therefore be quickly apparent to retailers.

Conclusion: It remains exciting

Wero’s success in e-commerce will depend largely on whether it manages to overcome the challenges of integrating into existing acquirer processes.  Wero’s acceptance business, which is now about to be launched, is not only an extension of its existing P2P business, but rather the sole booster that can give the scheme the necessary scale to be perceived as an established competitor on an international level.

In order to push this step forward as quickly as possible to the broad mass of acceptance points, i.e. e-commerce (and later also POS) merchants, EPI, as the scheme operator, is called upon to overcome the aforementioned hurdles with the acquirers in accordance with the expertise of the consumer banks. In this role, EPI is not only the discussion leader, but rather the central coordinating body whose scheme must come up with solutions that satisfy both sides. This is no trivial task, but it is nevertheless solvable.

It will also be exciting to see whether Wero expands through organic growth of the wallet or whether growth is generated primarily through further mergers with national debit payment systems, whose existing business could have a significant impact on the development of EPI. And in the end, of course, it must also appeal to consumers or end customers, who are naturally also decisive for the success or failure of a new payment system.

And what will happen in 2026?

In addition to the challenge of convincing acquirers of the Wero logic of transaction processing or bringing their processes into line with EPI transaction logic, EPI is already working intensively on preparing for the POS rollout. In view of the delays already occurring in e-commerce, it might be advisable to first overcome the hurdles of the acceptance business before approaching the terminal business. Careful preparation of the POS rollout is certainly necessary, but perhaps it makes more sense at this point in time to concentrate existing resources on the e-commerce rollout and coordinate it optimally. Only with solid acceptance processing a further planning towards the stationary business makes sense.