The Lead
At a German online checkout today, a shopper can pick Wero, confirm the payment in her banking app and pay without a card scheme in sight. It looks like the European payments future policymakers have promised for years. The ECB's counter-number is less flattering: in 2022, international card schemes still handled about 61% of euro-area card payments, and 13 euro-area countries rely on them entirely.
Between 2025 and 2029 the pieces of a European stack arrive one by one: instant payments and Verification of Payee, PSD3 and the Payment Services Regulation, Wero and its planned links to Bizum, Bancomat, MB WAY and Vipps MobilePay, and possibly a digital euro. This week's analysis looks at each layer and asks the uncomfortable question: will they change who carries Europe's card payments, or only modernise the plumbing?
This week's analysis
Europe's Payment Stack, Honestly
Instant rails, a new rulebook, a European wallet and a possible digital euro are arriving between 2025 and 2029. Whether Europe actually owns its payments will be measured by one number: how many card payments still run through foreign schemes.
Read the full analysis ↗Signals · 4 numbers
🧩 The wallet
Wero Is Taking Over iDEAL. Europe's Sovereign Checkout Finally Gets Real Volume.
EPI has started moving Dutch online payments from iDEAL to Wero. In Germany, Wero still struggles to win merchants. In the Netherlands, it inherits the default checkout, which makes this the first real test of Europe's payment sovereignty.
Read the full story ↗🛤️ The rails
Verification of Payee Is One Year Old. Instant Payments Are Still Testing Europe.
One year after Verification of Payee went live in the euro area, the consumer check works, but corporates are opting out at scale and fraud on instant payments keeps rising. For payment and e-money institutions, the real instant-payments deadline is still ahead in 2027.
Read the full story ↗A European payment instrument of our own must not be more expensive than the established alternatives.
Stefan Genth · Chief Executive, HDE German Retail Federation (11 Nov 2026, translated from German)
Further reading · 5 items
Cards Most EU countries rely on international card schemes Open story ↗ EU PSD3 and PSR: Council adopts texts at first reading Open story ↗ Wero Wero's Next, Now Open story ↗ Merchants Wero 2026: Reticence in online retail Open story ↗ Digital euro ECB selects 36 payment service providers for digital euro pilot Open story ↗On the calendar · 4 events
MoneyLIVE Payments Europe Amsterdam · 19-20 Nov NextGen Payments & RegTech Forum Cyprus Limassol · 19 Nov Finance Magnates London Summit London · 24 Nov BankenTech 2026 Frankfurt · 1 Dec