Wero, a new European payment system, launched on Tuesday and is set to compete with US big players such as PayPal, Mastercard and Visa. The digital wallet is intended to enable real-time payments at most savings banks and Volks- and Raiffeisenbanken in Germany.
The EPI payment system initiative consists of 14 European banks and two payment service providers. While Germany’s Commerzbank is not participating, Deutsche Bank is a member of the EPI joint venture, but will probably only start Wero at a later date.
EPI aims to strengthen Europe’s independence in the field of payment transactions. However, critics accuse the initiative of coming to the market too late. In addition, Wero is initially focusing primarily on Germany, Belgium and France. Other large countries such as Italy, Spain and Portugal are currently not included. The latter also applies to Austria.
Source: Krone
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