Opportunities are not so frequent to see seven French banking groups (BNP Paribas, BPCE, Crédit Agricole, Crédit Mutuel-Alliance Fédérale, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, La Banque Postale and Société Générale) come together to promote a common project.
This is the case, at the beginning of autumn, of the implementation in the French market of the Wero electronic wallet, the result of years of negotiations between banks from across the continent and ultimately destined to compete with the large “Visa and ”international. Mastercard as with new online payment players such as PayPal, or mobile payments such as Apple and Google.
Wero, the commercial brand of the European consortium European Payments Initiative (EPI), which brings together German, French and Benelux banks, has already been operational in Germany for several weeks. In France, its launch has already been announced to the clients of several of the banks involved in the project. Each of them will integrate it at their own pace in the coming weeks into their mobile application. Only La Banque Postale has opted for the Wero application because it is preparing an in-depth review of its own “app”.
Several other banking establishments will join the network in the coming months, he explains to World Martina Weimert, President and CEO of EPI, including Hello Bank, Fortuneo and Le Crédit lyonnais.
Sovereignty argument
The use of Wero will initially be limited to payment between individuals, relying on the existing user base of the French service Paylib, a French specialist in payments “with family or friends” with 15 million active users per month for six billion euros exchanged. the last twelve months.
Like Paylib, Wero will allow you to send money to a contact by entering a mobile number or email address, all in ten seconds, in accordance with the requirements of the new European regulation on instant payments that must come into force in. January 2025. The two services will be compatible until the disappearance of Paylib, scheduled for the first months of 2025.
The new service is expected to be progressively enriched with additional functions, such as requesting money and generating QR codes that will avoid having to transmit your phone number.
But the ambition of the project goes much further: EPI, which brings together 14 banks from five countries (Germany, Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) that represent 64% of individual payments in Europe, plans to expand its use for the payment of independent professionals without payment terminal, then for e-commerce and in-store payment, starting in 2026. It is time to acclimatize consumers to its use and, above all, to integrate the multiple providers of technical and financial services that intervene, between merchants and banks, in the electronic payment chain.
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