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Two of Europe’s major payments schemes, EuroPA and the European Payments Initiative (EPI), have announced a new collaboration aimed at accelerating the development of sovereign, cross-border payment solutions for the continent.
The partnership brings together EuroPA, represented by Bancomat (Italy), Bizum (Spain), MB WAY (Portugal’s SIBS), and Vipps MobilePay (Nordics), with EPI Company, the organisation behind the Wero digital wallet, which is backed by 16 European banks and payment providers and has already launched in Belgium, France and Germany.
Together, the entities will explore technical solutions to improve cross-border interoperability, making it easier for consumers in the EU to send and receive payments across borders using their preferred national services.
This move will be met with relief and enthusiasm by both regulators and stakeholders such as merchants.
As covered by Vixio, friction triggered by the Trump administration in the US means market and regulatory players in the EU are more motivated than ever to create local champions in the payments market, a topic that dominated the conference season.
The two groups said that they are driven by a shared goal of strengthening Europe’s sovereignty in payments, particularly amid concerns about reliance on non-European players in the sector.
The initial scope of the cooperation covers 15 countries, representing more than 382m people, or 84 percent of the population of the EU plus Norway, with the aim of enabling both consumer and merchant payments online and in-store.
The joint study is expected to conclude by the end of this summer.
Strength through connection
“Interconnecting existing solutions is a rapid path forward to European sovereignty and independence, a goal shared by both the European Commission and Eurosystem”, said EPI and EuroPA in announcing the study.
“This approach, grounded in Europe’s best-in-class solutions and diversity, will continue to drive innovation, convenience, and efficiency for both consumers and merchants.”
Launched earlier this year, EuroPA is an alliance of leading mobile payment providers seeking to build a sovereign pan-European payment infrastructure by linking domestic systems through interoperability.
Since March, Bancomat, Bizum, and MB WAY have been interoperable, enabling more than 50m users across Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Andorra to send and receive instant payments using their local solutions.
More recently, other systems, including Poland’s Blik, Greece’s IRIS, and Vipps MobilePay have joined the alliance, putting EuroPA on track to serve more than 100m users in 10 countries.
Meanwhile, EPI’s Wero wallet is designed to offer consumers and businesses across Europe a single, unified digital payment solution for all types of retail transactions, backed by some of the continent’s largest financial institutions.
Another path to payments sovereignty
The announcement of the partnership between EPI and EuroPA came as European Central Bank (ECB) president Christine Lagarde urged the European parliament to move quickly to provide legislation for the digital euro.
Addressing the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON), Lagarde said that “accelerating progress towards a digital euro is a strategic priority.”
The ECB president has repeatedly spoken of the need for European payments sovereignty in the context of increased geopolitical uncertainty, and has been a key advocate of developing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) for the EU.
She told the committee that a digital euro “would help safeguard Europe’s bank-based financial and monetary system. Not only would it strengthen Europe’s strategic autonomy, but it would also ensure an innovative and resilient European retail payment system.”
