American payment monopolies will have a new competitor in Europe: it’s called Wero and is already available to some Europeans.
Wero is the result of many years of work by the European Payments Initiative (EPI), a group of 16 European banks and financial institutions created in 2021 to ensure the operation of a single digital payment service.
The digital wallet is based on the existing Payconiq and iDEAL systems. It allows customers to transfer money to other users in Europe using only a phone number. No longer is an IBAN required – an international bank account code.
“One of the main advantages of Wero – in addition to the ability to make international payments – is the speed with which you can easily send and receive money,” said a representative of the Belgian bank KBC, which has been introducing the system free of charge to its customers for two months.
The system not only makes digital payments easier and faster in the eurozone, which includes 20 of the 27 EU member states. Above all, it is a response to Europe’s long-standing desire to achieve strategic autonomy in financial services.
There is currently no pan-European solution for digital payments.