Arkwright’s European Mobile Payments Report 2025 – key takeaways

Arkwright has just released its latter edition of the European Mobile Payments Report 2025 highlighting that the landscape in 2025 is at once dynamic, fragmented, and strategically contested.

Unlike Asia’s consolidated platforms or North America’s dominance of card-linked wallets, Europe has evolved into a three-tiered system: strong domestic account-to-account (A2A) ‘local heroes’, ambitious but still fragile pan-European initiatives, and powerful global OEM wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay. These categories interact in complex ways, shaped by regulation, political aspirations for sovereignty, and the relentless scale advantages of Big Tech.

Context and market structure

Mobile payments in Europe now constitute a mainstream element of retail and peer-to-peer (P2P) commerce. More than 40 domestic solutions remain active, though several were shuttered or migrated in 2024 (Germany’s giropay, France’s Paylib, Finland’s Pivo). At the same time, Apple Pay and Google Wallet have extended coverage to virtually all European markets, while Samsung Pay lags, limited to a handful of Western European countries. Against this backdrop, pan-European initiatives – notably the European Payments Initiative (EPI) and its wallet Wero, the European Mobile Payment Systems Association (EMPSA), and the European Payments Alliance (EuroPA) – attempt to knit fragmented solutions into a unified framework.

The European Mobile Payments Report 2025 divides the market into three categories, with an additional chapter dedicated to pan-European initiatives:

• Domestic systems such as Swish, Blik, Twint, Bizum, MB Way, Vipps MobilePay, and Payconiq, each deeply embedded in local banking ecosystems.
• Pan-European initiatives seeking interoperability and consolidation, chiefly EPI/Wero, EMPSA, and EuroPA.
• Global OEM wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, PayPal), which leverage device integration, card scheme rails, and brand power.

Domestic ‘local heroes’

Among 43 local systems assessed, eight stand out as successful national champions. Between 2017 and 2023, these solutions grew transactions at an average compound annual rate of 46%, far surpassing the 8% growth of card payments in their markets. Blik, Twint, and MB Way continue to expand at rates above 50% annually, while Swish and Vipps – already highly penetrated – are seeing growth taper off.

Their success rests on several factors: close collaboration with banks, early focus on free P2P functionality, strong merchant distribution, and trusted branding. Many have broadened into POS and ecommerce, creating omnichannel solutions. Twint exemplifies this strategy by embedding features such as parking, donations, and small-merchant QR solutions, turning its app into an interactive commerce platform. Bizum, supported by nearly 80% of Spanish banks at launch, reached critical mass quickly.

A decisive regulatory event was the European Commission’s 2024 mandate requiring Apple to open the iPhone’s NFC interface. This allowed domestic providers like Bizum, Blik, Vipps, and Swish to launch or announce tap-to-pay functionality, reducing their usability gap against OEM wallets. This change could prove pivotal in shifting competitive dynamics.

Domestic A2A solutions now account for 7–25% of card transaction volumes in their markets, signalling their potential to displace card payments. For merchants, this offers lower costs; for banks, it raises a dilemma, as interchange revenues may be cannibalised.

Still, national champions face structural limits. Their fragmentation prevents seamless cross-border use, and weaker systems in Germany, France, and Italy failed to establish traction, leaving those large markets open to Apple and Google.

Global OEM wallets

Apple Pay and Google Wallet dominate the OEM space, with Samsung Pay marginal. Apple Pay launched in the UK in 2015, expanding to 41 countries, while Google Pay (rebranded from Android Pay) now covers 45 – both initially focused on Western Europe, later moving into Central and Eastern Europe.

Though OEMs disclose no transaction volumes, Arkwright’s modelling estimates a 70% CAGR in European transaction volumes between 2017 and 2023. Apple Pay leads in share, driven largely by POS transactions, with ecommerce a smaller share. Importantly, OEM wallets do not generally handle P2P payments in Europe, unlike domestic systems.

PayPal remains strong in ecommerce and P2P, and has announced a mobile POS wallet in Germany, though its impact is yet unclear. By contrast, Alipay and WeChat remain niche, focused on Chinese tourists. Emerging players like X (Elon Musk’s X Money) or Meta Pay have little traction in Europe.

OEM wallets’ advantages lie in seamless device integration, consumer familiarity, and global reach. Their economics, however, depend on card scheme rails – either earning fees from issuers/acquirers or leveraging data monetisation. Domestic rivals argue they can undercut these economics by offering cheaper A2A alternatives.

Pan-European initiatives

Europe’s political and industry leaders continue to push for continental solutions. Three initiatives dominate:

• EPI, backed by banks in France, Germany, and Benelux, launched its Wero wallet in 2024, starting with P2P payments. By mid-2025, Wero had 42 million registered users – mostly migrated from Paylib (France) and Payconiq (Belgium/Luxembourg), but only 1.4 million in Germany, highlighting weak traction there. EPI plans to extend into POS and ecommerce in 2025–2026, starting with QR-based pilots. Its partnerships accelerated in 2025, with Nexi Germany, Computop, PPRO, Unzer, Revolut, and Belgian banks joining. Austrian banks are considering joining, expanding EPI’s footprint. Strategically, EPI shifted from a standalone scheme to seeking interoperability, announcing collaboration with EuroPA in 2025.

• EMPSA is a network of national payment systems across 14 countries, focusing on interoperability without creating a new wallet. Payments would be routed via a central hub to local systems, enabling ‘payment roaming’. Early tests included cross-border transactions between Bancomat, Bluecode, and Twint. Its strength lies in extending beyond EPI’s narrow geography.

• EuroPA was launched in 2024 by Bancomat, Bizum, and MB Way to link Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Andorra. Since then, Vipps MobilePay, Blik, and IRIS (Greece) have joined, widening scope to the Nordics and Eastern Europe. In June 2025, EuroPA began collaboration with EPI to explore a joint solution across P2P, POS, and ecommerce.

These initiatives collectively mark Europe’s attempt to reduce dependence on foreign players. Yet the challenges are immense: harmonising technology, merchant service fees, governance structures, and shareholder interests across countries with very different market contexts.

Comparative growth dynamics

When comparing domestic champions and OEM wallets, both clearly outpace the general payments market. Domestic solutions had about 50% more transaction volume in their markets by 2023, but OEM wallets are expanding faster, particularly in markets without strong local alternatives.

A key distinction is their use case: domestic systems are still heavily P2P-driven, while OEM wallets dominate POS. The opening of NFC may shift this balance, but OEMs’ brand pull and device integration give them structural advantages.

Wero inherits weaker growth trajectories from Paylib, Payconiq, and iDEAL, and thus must accelerate adoption to compete with Apple and Google. Its future depends on whether it can leverage political backing and interoperability partnerships to overcome slow momentum.

Success factors and expert insights

Arkwright updated its 2024 framework of mobile payment success factors, now including eight drivers:

1. High digitalisation and cashless acceptance culture
2. Supportive regulation
3. Bank collaboration and distribution
4. Solving real user problems (starting with P2P)
5. Superior customer experience and value-added services
6. Trusted branding
7. Sustainable business models
8. Merchant ‘pull’ via vertical solutions.

Expert interviews with leaders from Swish, Bizum, Twint, and EPI reinforced these findings. Collaboration with banks was universally cited as decisive, P2P functionality as critical to building mass adoption, and brand trust as essential in maintaining loyalty. Differentiation from OEM wallets hinges on local trust, integration into daily services, and sovereignty narratives.

Interestingly, experts converged on the belief that no single European solution will dominate. Instead, interoperability among established systems, supported by SEPA Instant, is viewed as the most realistic path.

Strategic scenarios

The report outlines three potential futures: a single European solution (e.g., EPI/EuroPA consolidation succeeding, uniting most domestic systems), multi-regional clusters (regional groups emerge, e.g., Nordics + Iberia + CEE, linked by interoperability), or continued fragmentation (with domestic and OEM solutions coexisting without major consolidation).

By 2025, evidence points toward multi-regional clusters, as EuroPA expands and Vipps MobilePay, Blik, and others link across borders. Bluecode’s roaming and Blik’s expansion into Slovakia and Romania also support this scenario. Despite this, a true single European wallet remains unlikely in the near term. The technical, commercial, and governance hurdles are too great, and only massive capital injections and political alignment could enable EPI to acquire and renew local systems.

Regardless of these, in the near term, OEM wallets will continue to grow, especially in large markets with weak domestic options. Local heroes will maintain strongholds in their home countries, reinforced by NFC access and interoperability projects. Pan-European initiatives will gain momentum but remain works in progress. For the EU, this trajectory is only a partial success. Mobile payments are expanding, but sovereignty remains fragmented. The realistic outcome is a patchwork of strong national systems, clustered regional alliances, and OEM dominance where local alternatives failed. From a strategic viewpoint, the central challenge is speed. Apple and Google iterate rapidly, while European projects are encumbered by multi-stakeholder governance and political negotiation. Unless domestic systems and EPI can accelerate their expansion, OEM wallets may entrench dominance in Europe’s largest markets.

Conclusion

The European mobile payments market in 2025 is defined by tension between sovereignty and convenience, fragmentation and consolidation, banking coalitions and technology giants. Domestic champions prove that account-to-account systems can rival cards, but their national silos limit cross-border impact. OEM wallets demonstrate relentless growth, capturing markets where local alternatives were weak. Pan-European initiatives seek to bridge the divide, but their success is uncertain and politically fraught. In all likelihood, Europe’s future will be characterised by multi-regional clusters of interoperable local incumbents coexisting uneasily with Apple Pay and Google Wallet. True unification remains a long-term aspiration rather than an imminent reality. The next decade will decide whether Europe can turn its patchwork of strong local solutions into a coherent continental alternative, or whether Big Tech consolidates its hold on European retail payments.

 

You can access Arkwright’s European Mobile Payments Report 2025 by following this link: https://www.arkwright.com/project/european-mobile-payments-report-2025

 

About Arkwright

 

Arkwright is a high-end payments and digital financial services strategy boutique. Founded in 1987 in the Nordics as a spin-off from a major strategy brand, Arkwright operates globally with offices in Hamburg, Oslo, Stockholm, and London, and an additional operational presence in the Middle East and the US. Arkwright works at the intersection of fact-based analysis and deep industry knowledge, serving selective clients.