The European Payments Initiative in 2026: What’s changed

The European Payments Initiative (EPI) is a collaborative effort by major European banks and financial institutions to build a unified, continent-wide payment system to reduce Europe’s reliance on non-European payment rails.

What the European Payments Initiative is and why it was created

The European Payments Initiative launched in 2020 in response to a longstanding gap in European payments. Despite decades of monetary union, European cross-border retail payments still relied heavily on Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal. That’s why the EPI’s founding shareholders — who came from major banks and payment service providers like Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, ING, and Santander — set out to build a payments program owned and operated by European institutions.

Originally, EPI set out to build a full-scale alternative to Visa and Mastercard that could replace card networks across the continent. That plan proved difficult to realize, with several founding banks dropping out. EPI ultimately abandoned the card component and refocused on instant payments and a digital wallet. By 2023, it had acquired Dutch payment scheme iDEAL and Luxembourg-based Payconiq to build on already existing infrastructure rather than starting from scratch.

That pivot produced Wero, EPI’s digital wallet. Wero moves money directly between bank accounts over Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) instant rails, rather than routing transactions through a card network. It launched with peer-to-peer transfers in mid-2024 and expanded into e-commerce in 2025. Other capabilities, like point-of-sale purchases, are up next on its roadmap.

Wero’s rollout, from peer-to-peer payments to e-commerce

Wero began as a person-to-person transfer platform. After building a user base, it moved on to merchants. Germany launched e-commerce payments in late 2025, followed by Belgium in early 2026 and a progressive rollout in France. As of September 2026, Wero serves roughly 58 million users.

Still, that’s a fraction of Visa and Mastercard’s reach across the EU’s cross-border payments landscape. But Wero doesn’t necessarily need to build that scale on its own. Its reach depends on how well it connects with the payment systems that Europeans already use.

The EuroPA interoperability agreement changes the scale

In February 2026, the EPI signed a memorandum of understanding with the European Payments Alliance (EuroPA), a group of national instant-payment systems including Spain’s Bizum, Italy’s Bancomat, Portugal’s SIBS-MB WAY, and Vipps MobilePay across the Nordics. The agreement links these systems through a shared technical hub, letting a Bizum user in Spain pay a merchant who only accepts Wero, and vice versa, without switching apps.

Combined, EPI and EuroPA’s participating payment systems cover roughly 130 million users across 13 countries. Cross-border peer-to-peer payments are scheduled to roll out in 2026, with e-commerce and point-of-sale interoperability targeted for 2027.

That gives EPI a path to much broader reach than its 2023 pivot alone might have suggested. At the time, Thomas Müller of regtech Rivero AG told Convera that the initial wallet-first approach was “a wise choice and a good starting point.” Three years later, interoperability has become central to Wero’s strategy for expanding beyond its own user base.

That gives EPI a path to much broader reach than its 2023 pivot alone might have suggested. At the time, Thomas Müller of regtech Rivero AG told Convera that the initial wallet-first approach was “a wise choice and a good starting point.” Three years later, interoperability has become central to Wero’s strategy for expanding beyond its own user base.

Where the digital euro fits into the future

The European Central Bank’s (ECB) digital euro adds a second layer to the story. Unlike Wero, the digital euro would be central bank money, issued directly by the ECB rather than by commercial banks. And while the two projects have sometimes been framed as competitors, that perception is shifting.

At the Bundesbank’s payments symposium in August 2026, board member Lutz Lienenkämper argued that Europe’s new payment offerings need to work together rather than sit alongside each other, and specifically floated integrating the digital euro into the Wero wallet. The ECB’s pilot program is set to launch in September 2027, with potential issuance not expected before 2029, so the practical shape of that integration remains open.

What’s clear is that European officials increasingly view Wero and the digital euro as complementary pieces of a broader push for European payment sovereignty, rather than simply rival bets.

What this means for the future of European payments

None of this immediately changes how businesses move money across borders today. But it does point to where European payments infrastructure is headed. Moving forward, there will likely be fewer dependencies on non-European card networks, more interoperability between national systems, and a stronger emphasis on payment verification standards as more players connect to shared real-time payment rails.

Businesses with European operations should track EPI and the digital euro as the region’s payments infrastructure evolves, much as the ACH’s evolution alongside newer payment rails has reshaped payment options in other markets.

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