Last year, the EPI joined forces with the European Payments Alliance (EuroPA) to explore ways to make it easy for consumers to send and receive payments seamlessly across the continent. The move was explicitly described as an attempt to wrest control of the EU’s payments ecosystem away from US card schemes and Big Tech giants and secure the Bloc’s sovereignty in payments.
Bank-backed EPI launched its Wero digital wallet in 2024, harnessing the potential of account-to-account (A2A) payments to help European banks take on the might of Visa and Mastercard.
EuroPA is an alliance established between Italy’s Bancomat, Spanish scheme Bizum and Portugal’s MB Way/Sibs designed to enable their 50 million users to send and receive money across borders instantly to mobile phone numbers. It has since added members, including Poland’s Blik, Greece’s Iris, and Nordic giant Vipps MobilePay.
