Europe’s response to Visa and PayPal: a new payment system expanding
Banks already see the biggest threat.
A quiet but very strategic shift is taking place in the European payments market. While consumers pay with Visa, Mastercard, or PayPal every day without much thought, banks and payment infrastructure developers in Europe are trying to regain what they have lost for years: control and sovereignty.
Now this fight is gaining momentum: new payment service Wero is joining an alliance with four other major European payment solutions, with the ambitious goal of ensuring seamless cross-border payments by 2027, so that Europeans can pay by phone almost anywhere in Europe, without relying on US systems.
This is not just a technological project. It is a geopolitical and economic topic, because it is about who will control European payments in the future: European banks or international giants whose decisions have already become part of everyday life.
Wero connects with Italy, Spain, Portugal and Scandinavia
EPI Company, the developer of Wero, announced that it has signed a letter of intent with four other payment service providers: Italy’s Bancomat, Spain’s Bizum, Portugal’s SIBS, and Scandinavia’s Vipps MobilePay. This means that these systems will seek to harmonize their technologies and operations so that users can use one service in different countries.
A practical example, which is the main promise of this project: if you have Wero, in the future, you could pay in Spain or Portugal as easily as at home. This functionality, according to the companies, should start working from 2027.
The first cross-border payments will start in 2026
The most important moment is that international payments via phone are planned to launch even earlier, starting in 2026. In other words, not only payments in stores, but also simple transfers: when one person sends money to another, even if they are in different countries.
These five payment systems operate in a total of 13 countries, and Wero has serious backing – EPI is supported by banks from Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, including savings and cooperative banks and Deutsche Bank.
Europe is in a hurry: too much money is flowing through US systems
The rhetoric of this alliance is very clear – it is a step towards “European payments sovereignty”. Currently, a large part of payments in Europe, especially by card and online, travel through US systems such as Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal.
According to the European Central Bank, as much as 64 percent of card payments in the euro area are made through international (non-European) systems. This means that Europe is dependent not only technologically, but also strategically: on regulations, tax structures, data flows, and infrastructure solutions, the control of which lies across the Atlantic.
Digital Euro – a paradoxical background: ECB pushes, but banks resist
This is where the biggest intrigue begins. The European Central Bank, in an effort to reduce its dependence on the US payments sector, is actively pushing for a digital euro. The argument is logical: if Europeans are using cash less and less, it is necessary to ensure that the public payments infrastructure remains European.
But banks are increasingly seeing the digital euro as a competitor, not a help. They fear that the digital euro could compete directly with systems like Wero and eventually drive them out of the market. In other words, banks feel they have finally begun to build a European answer to PayPal, but at the same time, the ECB could create an alternative that becomes even more powerful and renders the banks’ project redundant.
Another fear is also being raised in banking circles: if a digital euro were to emerge, PayPal could integrate it extremely quickly and conveniently, and so could Apple or Amazon. In this case, a paradox would arise in Europe: the digital euro would be a European currency, but the dominant platforms for “using” money could remain American.
Wero’s problem: late launch and few traders
While Wero’s ambition is high, the reality today is still quite modest. Wero only started offering e-commerce payments at the end of 2025. Currently, it is reported that around 125 merchants have joined, but these are not the big names in European e-commerce that are really shaping consumer habits.
In addition, there is another barrier that may hinder development: in order to use Wero, the customer needs to have an account with a bank that offers this system. Meanwhile, PayPal’s model is the opposite – it does not tie the user to a specific bank and acts as a universal intermediary, which is why it was able to take a dominant position.
PayPal is currently considered the dominant solution in Germany for both person-to-person payments and online shopping, where its share is around 30 percent of turnover.
Europe aims to make payments “local” but as convenient as US solutions
To the consumer, this whole fight may seem distant at first glance, but it will determine how much we will pay for transfers in the future, what the service fees for businesses will be, how fast international payments will work, and who will manage our financial data flows.
If the Wero Alliance can deliver on its promise by 2027, Europe will be moving closer to a scenario where cross-border payments become simple, cheap, and “internal” – without third-party intermediaries. But it will also be a real test: whether European banks can create a convenience that rivals PayPal and the card giants, and not just provide a political response.
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