Focus this year is on P2P transfers. Commerce is targeted for 2027. Given EuroPA has done a token amount of transactions to date, I’m not sure anyone should hold their breaths.
The Spanish equivalent (Bizum) is merging into Wero is not a token use case, it's absolutely massive here. The absolute standard for peer-to-peer payments, more than 30 million users (>65% of the population), and they already launched contactless terminals for in-person commercial payments this month (https://euroweeklynews.com/2026/04/03/bizum-goes-contactless...).
Opposite is also true, some lower-value places (like fruitstands, street vendors) don't accept card/contactless because they don't want to pay visa mastercard fee.
I have no numbers but I would guess at least 50% of non-cash transactions are still card/contactless. I wouldn't be surprised if this number is 90%.
The greatest force of Wero is that, being from a bank consortium and not "another app", you can send money to people that don't even know the system exists as long as you have their phone number because the money will go straight to the bank account registered with this phone number.
You don't need to register to the service to receive money so basically anyone holding an account in a compatible bank can receive funds instantly. Which means, as the person sending the money, you don't have to tell your friends to install it.
No single country can claim ownership because it's an EU initiative. iDeal was one of the first and relatively easy systems across the EU, but it's hardly the predecessor.
Wero also does peer-to-peer transfers which iDeal doesn't (unless you use iDeal to pay for tikkies but that's still two apps). The new system is not just an iDeal rebranding.
Directly, without Tikkie? That's really interesting. I wasn't aware of that yet. My impression was indeed mostly a rebranding and expansion of iDeal.
Europe's Banks Launch Wero Payments to Dislodge Visa, Mastercard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41666833 - September 2024 (88 comments)
Unofficial Wero Adoption Tracker - https://www.werotracker.eu/
Pretty much all purchases from Dutch webshops are paid through iDEAL as well as many P2P payments. It's also supported by international payment services (iirc Stripe and Shopify).
If they manage to replicate it in other European countries, Werk will be huge. Moreover, it's supported by many banks.
It's not like it's that difficult to implement. Most Brazilian banks implemented a similar protocol in months.
What I fear is that people will try Wero, see that it's not what they wanted and then never go back. But maybe I'm wrong.
In Sweden we have Swish for domestic transfers, if I could use Swish (or if Wero took it over) the same way to transfer money to my friends living in other EU countries I'd be very, very happy.
What kind of functionality PayPal offers that is much better? Using cards instead of direct debit?
I know the Swedish government is also pressuring swish to integrate with vipps. So I guess you'll have this ability soon.
[2] https://nyheter24.se/nyheter/ekonomi/privatekonomi/1452366-d...
I have recently seen people surprised when they sent a Wero transaction and the other party could see their IBAN.
I don't personally know anyone who uses PayPal, the only times I used it was for transferring money using F&F to purchase 2nd hand music gear.
PayPal seems to be a default for online purchases and transactions between people.
What functionality are you looking for exactly?
I use paypal to transfer money to other accounts & pay for online shopping, possibly in other valuta. In my opinion Wero (earlier I used IDeal) is easier then paypal for this purpose
* Buyer protection
* Obfuscation of my banking data (IBAN)
* Having access to it with my bank
* Not needing to share my contact list
At the moment I don't see much improvement over an instant SEPA transaction. Since both parties will see each other's IBAN anyways with Wero I can just give out my IBAN.
Wero does introduce some sort of chargebacks and disputes, buy from reputable sellers and otherwise you are still free to use paypal for additional protection (but don't send money as "Friends & Family").
> Obfuscation of my banking data (IBAN)
IBAN is public facing and it is not a problem to share. It is the identifier of your account therefore required to make transfers. Money can't be charged with your IBAN. With paypal you share your e-mail.
> Having access to it with my bank
Your bank is the one that is providing the access to the Wero service, it will pull from or deposit into your bank account.
> Not needing to share my contact list
I don't see how this is required.
The strength of Wero is that it will be a unified friction less way of making digital transfers. It finds a similar place in the market that in the USA is filled by Venmo or Cash app however if you have a bank account you can use it.
I think it speaks volumes that no one within the Netherlands uses Paypal, but iDeal is the de-facto standard for all online payments there.
I mean my bank is not available in Wero. And A lot of other banks are the same. PayPal or Klarna just works.
> IBAN is public facing and it is not a problem to share. It is the identifier of your account therefore required to make transfers. Money can't be charged with your IBAN. With paypal you share your e-mail.
I know but a lot of people don't see it that way. Not me. But I know they are.
> Not needing to share my contact list
AFAIK you need to sync your contacts to them to send a person money. I am not sure though because I don't have access.
Please don't misunderstand me. I want something like Wero in Europe. I just hope that it's not the wrong thing and people will be disappointed and less likely to try something new.
I would be careful. In practice, you can setup a SEPA collection with an IBAN without the owner even knowing or signing a mandate because the banks don't check.
Of course, you can revert the transactions made this way, ... if you notice them (you have 30 days).
Edit: add time period
Optionally you scan or get send a payment request, and pay through Wero.
I think the Digital Euro initiative is closer to replacing contactless payments than Wero is, but it'll depend on the country I think.
Contactless requires the acceptor to have a specific piece of hardware that comes with a contract.
The QR code is an image, that AFIAK contains instructions on a specific transfer (target account number, amount, reference etc) in a machine-readable format, that the sender can chose to scan and accept or not.
Neither is "better", they have different uses.
My take-away from this tedious thread is that Wero does not currently support contactless. It is fine to admit it (I don't why people turn into fanboys over randopm things) but that does make it of limited use for in-person transactions apart from niche use-cases and, certainly, this means NOT "Goodbye to Visa and Mastercard" just yet.
Although contactless through banking app go through Google Wallet these days, which I hate, so I would prefer if there was a European alternative for that. Could be part of Wero, but it doesn't have to be. As long as it's not part of Google.
From a software freedom perspective, I actually prefer QR codes. The UX of tapping a card is a little better (though it also opens up an avenue for theft) but I think every phone I've held the past ten years has had some way to quickly scan a QR code from the lock screen, even if not every phone made the possibility obvious.
Instead of tapping or swiping the card, you tap the phone or watch, or scan a QR on your phone and then confirm in the bank app. Both ways seem to have similar useability to me, and an equivalent result. I've done both in different countries, and neither really bothered me. Yes, the tap method has higher potential for petty theft.
Again, China has what is has because people had phones but no payment cards, and they don't have "software freedom" either (whatever that means): They are fully bound to the two providers (Alipay and WeChat) which provide accounts to a point now that is much worse that my dependency or Visa or Mastercard here in Europe because most places now do not accept anything else.
What would make sense is for the likes of Wero to find a way to support contactless so people can just tap exactly as they do now. As said by another commenter, this does not require a physical card (and already exists with Apple Pay and Google Pay). Frankly, Wero is a solution looking for a problem at this point in time...