Europe is moving towards a more unified digital economy, with both policymakers and payments professionals keen to see greater harmonisation.
Our report on how Europe likes to pay highlighted that cross-border transactions across the continent are set to rise by 58% by 2028, largely fuelled by Western Europe’s powerhouse economies.
Despite this growth, payment preferences remain highly fragmented. Some markets still rely heavily on cards, while others have embraced digital wallets, bank transfers, and other alternative payment methods (APMs).
To help address this lack of interoperability, the European Payments Initiative (EPI) launched Wero, an account-to-account (A2A) payment solution designed to simplify digital transactions across multiple countries.
Backed by Europe’s largest banks and built on SEPA Instant, Wero can be considered the first truly pan-European wallet. We recently spoke with Martina Weimert, CEO of EPI Company, to find out more about the vision behind Wero, how it will meet the needs of both users and merchants, and the roadmap for its expansion.
Now momentum is building for Wero, and 2026 will be a big year for the platform. So what’s in the pipeline?
The realisation of new use cases
Wero established its presence through peer-to-peer (P2P) payments, which are live across Belgium, France, and Germany. The service allows users to send and receive money instantly between bank accounts using just a phone number or a QR code.
Having grown its European user base to more than 50 million, Wero is now expanding into merchant payments, recurring transactions, and broader in-store use cases — aiming to create a sovereign, unified wallet solution for the European Union.
The first wave of licensed EPI members, which includes payabl., have already integrated Wero, giving merchants access to a card alternative that helps tackle cart abandonment.
In a sign of growing merchant adoption, November 2025 saw Europe’s largest ticketing provider, CTS Eventim, become the first major e-commerce company in Germany to integrate the Wero wallet. Others will follow swiftly.
In 2026, we’ll see advanced features such as subscription management, BNPL options, instant refunds, and loyalty features.
Merchants will be able to set up subscriptions without complex processes with Wero’s one-click proposition, with customers able to scan a QR code to instantly activate their subscriptions.
Wero will also be implementing NFC-enabled point-of-sale (POS) payments in the latter part of 2026, which will facilitate contactless payments at physical stores across Europe. Like other Wero services, NFC POS payments will use instant A2A transfers, meaning money flows directly from the consumer’s bank account to the merchants upon approval.
Migration and expansion into new markets
Wero has already replaced the Paylib service in France, with a dedicated Wero app now available from many of the country’s banks, such as La Banque Postale.
In Belgium, meanwhile, another five banks – including Argenta and Beobank – are set to begin offering Wero to their customers from the first half of 2026, which will significantly increase the service’s coverage in the country.
In the Netherlands, iDEAL was absorbed by Wero, and now operates under iDEAL | Wero. Eventually, Wero will be the only name that consumers see, with the iDEAL brand expected to be fully phased out by the end of 2027.
Wero will also offer additional features, including purchase protection. This transition is logical; it will help to retain the convenience, speed, and security that customers have come to expect from iDEAL while laying the foundations for new services.
Wero’s footprint will continue to spread quickly as other countries come on stream. Buckaroo, Payconiq, and EPI recently announced a strategic partnership to bring Wero to Luxembourg.
Upon regulatory approval, Payconiq’s merchant portfolio in the country will be transferred to Buckaroo in early 2026, with Buckaroo then enabling those merchants to accept Wero once the standalone app is launched in Luxembourg later in the year. A broader rollout is then planned across other European countries as we move into 2027.
By partnering with payabl., one of Europe’s first Wero-enabled payment providers, merchants can tap into these developments and benefit from a direct integration and a dedicated support team to facilitate a smooth onboarding.