Wero

Wero is a European digital wallet and instant account-to-account payment service developed by the European Payments Initiative (EPI). It was launched in Germany on 2 July 2024, followed by France and Belgium later that year. Wero is currently available in Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Leading Austrian banks are planning to introduce the service. It was introduced as a successor to several national payment services, including Giropay in Germany, Paylib in France, Payconiq in Belgium and Luxembourg, and iDEAL in the Netherlands. The service initially focused on person-to-person transfers, and from November 2025 expanded to e-commerce payments. In-store payments started in September 2026 through the complete switch of the established Payconiq payment network to Wero in Luxembourg. Wero is a European alternative to established international (US-based) payment services and card networks such as PayPal, Visa and Mastercard, and as such it is often viewed as part of a European push for "payments sovereignty", i.e. a payment system that is "European" from a strategic and data-protection perspective. The name is a portmanteau of the English personal pronoun we and the name of the European Union's common currency, the euro, but is also based on the Italian word vero, meaning 'true'.