By Gianluca Lo Nostro and Elizabeth Howcroft
PARIS, March 26 (Reuters) - Fears that President Donald Trump's administration could limit Europe's access to U.S. payments infrastructure are boosting regional adoption of a competing European payment platform, the CEO of the European Payments Initiative (EPI) told Reuters.
The Brussels-based company has developed Wero to serve as an alternative to Mastercard, Visa and Apple Pay, which now dominate in-store payments in Europe.
Founded in 2020 by a group
of 16 major European banks, including BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank, and payments providers, it has since grown to 45 members, with fintechs Mollie, Worldpay, and N26 among the companies to have joined in recent months.
EUROPEANS FEAR GETTING CUT OFF FROM US PAYMENTS SYSTEM
EPI's CEO Martina Weimert said that there was a sense of urgency about reducing European dependence on U.S. firms. Asked in an interview if merchants were preparing for the possibility that the Trump administration could cut Europe off from its financial systems, she said "absolutely" and said two big merchants had cited international resilience as a reason for using Wero.
"It's not like this is out of the blue, totally vague scenario," Weimert said. Those things can happen very quickly, she said.
Trump's "America First" policies, which upend the global order and are fraying longtime transatlantic ties, have spurred European Union efforts to reduce its reliance on U.S. companies in strategic industries, from payments to technology.
Wero, launched in 2024, faces an uphill battle. It is so far only used for peer-to-peer transfers, while international card schemes including Visa and Mastercard account for two-thirds of euro area card transactions, according to the European Central Bank.
National payment schemes backed by banks in Spain and Italy also raise concerns of fragmentation, despite their pledges to collaborate on a pan-European platform.
DIGITAL EURO SCEPTICISM
Wero is now available to customers in Belgium, France and Germany and its number of users has risen to 52.5 million from 43.5 million in September, still a fraction of Europe's payments industry. EPI plans to expand to Luxembourg and the Netherlands in the next year.
Weimert said she saw the digital euro, which the ECB plans to issue in 2029, not as competition but as something that could be integrated into Wero's wallet, and was worried if it would arrive soon enough.
"I don't have a problem with the digital euro. What I find quite strange is that in the current context, where we clearly every day would say, 'Oh, we have a problem with European sovereignty,' to say, 'Oh, let's wait another five years before the digital euro is there and then hope that this will work.'"
(Reporting by Gianluca Lo Nostro and Elizabeth Howcroft; Editing by Tommy Reggiori Wilkes and Tomasz Janowski)
