Worldline webinar key takeaways – building your Wero strategy

Paula Albu, Junior Editor at The Paypers, shares the key takeaways from the webinar co-hosted with Worldline, titled ‘Building your Wero Strategy: Real-World Perspectives from European Financial Institutions’.

In this discussion, Emmanuelle François, Global Head of Axepta at BNP Paribas, Antonio Soares, Head of Business Development, Financial Services at Worldline, Corina Metternich, Head of Business Product Management Payment Methods Europe at Deutsche Bank, and Sander Littooy, Product Lead for Online Payments at ABN AMRO, joined moderator Esther Groen, Payments, Banking & Fintech Leader to share candid, market-level insights on what it actually takes to launch, migrate, and scale Wero across Europe. 

European payment sovereignty is no longer a policy ambition. It is being built right now, market by market, bank by bank, transition by transition. A live poll at the start of the webinar captured where the industry stands: 30-40% of attendees are already actively involved in launching or have already launched it. In comparison, 60% are still undecided or in the evaluation stage. That gap set the stage for the conversation.

Here are the key takeaways from the webinar.

Wero’s foundations: what it is and why it matters

Antonio Soares opened by grounding the discussion in fundamentals. Wero is a digital-first, mobile-native payment wallet that leverages Europe’s existing SEPA Instant infrastructure for account-to-account settlement. Unlike other wallets, it spans six countries – France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Austria, and it was not built from scratch. By acquiring and building on three established local payment schemes – iDEAL in the Netherlands, Payconiq in Belgium and Luxembourg, and Paylib in France – Wero entered the market with over 50 million registered users already on the platform.

The roadmap is clear: peer-to-peer first, e-commerce second, point-of-sale by 2027. But the strategic framing matters as much as the product roadmap. As moderator Esther put it at the outset, Wero and EPI are not just another payment method; they are a direct response to the question of who controls Europe’s payments infrastructure.

Why banks cannot afford to wait

Antonio was direct about timing. The window to join the Wero ecosystem and help shape it is between now and 2027. Banks and merchants that move now can influence the user experience, communicate friction points to EPI, and build merchant relationships before the ecosystem is already defined by others. Those who wait will enter a landscape shaped by competitors.

His advice was equally direct: leverage existing technical providers to avoid building everything from scratch, own the user experience within your own banking app, and move fast. The infrastructure is there. SEPA Instant is deployed across the continent. The large banks are supporting it, and scale will follow.

Germany: building momentum in a PayPal-dominated market

Corina Metternich shared the German perspective. As an international bank and acquirer, Deutsche Bank committed from the outset to launching Wero across all participating markets, not just Germany. But Germany presents genuine challenges: e-commerce is dominated by PayPal, the point of sale has a well-embedded local debit product in Girocard, and a previous local scheme called Paydirekt never gained the traction it needed, leaving lingering skepticism in the market.  

Her message was that Wero is fundamentally different from Paydirekt – the geopolitical context, the scale of registered users, and the pan-European ambition set it apart. And progress that may not yet be visible externally is still meaningful. Merchant onboarding for any new payment method can take 12 to 18 months from the first conversation to going live. That timeline often makes the market look slower than it actually is.

Looking back, her biggest learning was around pace. Deutsche Bank often waited for near-final scheme rules before beginning technical integration. Their assumptions, it turned out, were right most of the time. Her advice to others: work with assumptions and move forward. Waiting for 90% certainty costs more time than it saves.

France: lessons from large-scale migration

Emmanuelle François outlined France’s migration story. The country successfully transitioned 35 million active Paylib users to Wero P2P through a carefully orchestrated approach built on four pillars:

• a simple opt-in migration that fully reused the existing Paylib customer base;
• a simultaneous launch across all banks to create massive, unified momentum;
• a substantial national communications campaign;
• an optimal payment experience that kept users engaged after the switch.

The result? Wero has become a household verb in France: people now say I’ll Wero you instead of I’ll send you money.

Emmanuelle noted that while the consumer migration was relatively straightforward, the e-commerce merchant onboarding phase now underway is more complex, requiring proof of strong acceptance rates, competitive pricing, optimal PSP integration, and a fast, reliable user experience.

The Netherlands: migration a national institution

Sander Littooy framed the Dutch situation precisely: this is not a launch, it’s a migration. iDEAL is a 20-year-old payment method with 70% market share and 1.6 billion transactions processed in 2025. Moving that volume to a new infrastructure, with minimal leakage and no disruption to consumer trust, is one of the most complex payment migrations undertaken anywhere in Europe.

The Dutch banking community designed a three-phase approach. The first phase introduced co-branding, familiarising consumers with the Wero name alongside iDEAL. The second phase is technical migration: transactions are processed on the Wero platform behind the scenes, while consumers and merchants continue to see iDEAL branding, a deliberate proof point for reliability before any visible change. The third phase is the full consumer migration, where merchants sign new contracts and users actively adopt Wero.

Sander was clear about what this takes. Wero runs on a different infrastructure than iDEAL, with a three-phase payment flow (consent, authorisation, and capture) and new functionality including chargebacks and subscriptions. Even with the highest internal priority, technical implementation took 12 to 15 months.

His message to institutions still evaluating the transition was simple: start now.

Barriers are real, but solvable

A poll during the webinar revealed three roughly equal barriers holding organisations back:

• unclear business case and ROI;
• internal priorities and competing IT demands;
• uncertainty about scheme rules.

On the business case, Emmanuelle reframed the discussion. Wero is not purely an ROI calculation; it is a question of sovereignty. Merchants understand that. It is about creating a more unified European payments landscape. Sander advises that building internally and testing with the ecosystem takes 12 to 15 months, urging banks to start as soon as possible. Corina talks about how Deutsche Bank built the blueprint, so others do not need to start from zero.  

European payment sovereignty, more than a buzzword

Corina elevated the conversation beyond product adoption. A significant share of European retail and e-commerce payments currently routes through non-European networks. That means pricing decisions, data, and ultimate control sit outside Europe.

The existence of thriving local schemes (iDEAL, Bizum, Girocard) is not an obstacle to European sovereignty. It is evidence that Europeans can build a successful payment infrastructure. The question is how to connect those schemes through interoperability while respecting the local trust and payment habits that made each of them successful.

Point-of-sale, pricing, and the digital euro

On point-of-sale, Antonio emphasised that Wero’s 2027 POS expansion will depend entirely on using existing EMV infrastructure and terminal capabilities – NFC tap-and-pay and QR codes, without requiring costly hardware replacement. No costly hardware replacement can be required if adoption is to scale.

On pricing, Sander shared that in the Netherlands, Wero pricing has been aligned with iDEAL and fixed through 2028. The structural incentive for EPI and participating banks is volume, not margin, meaning that Wero’s cost advantage over cards and international wallets is a deliberate and durable part of the merchant proposition.

On the digital euro, Antonio drew a clear direction: the digital euro is a replacement for cash, operating in a different space entirely. Wero is a commercial payment initiative. The more likely outcome is that Wero incorporates the digital euro as one payment option within the wallet, not that the two compete.

What comes next?

The conversation closed with practical advice from each panellist.

Emmanuelle encourages institutions to be ambitious, but disciplined. Build step by step: P2P first, e-commerce second, point of sale third.

Antonio highlighted that the infrastructure is ready, banks are aligned, and scale will come. Join it, move fast, and take control of the user experience within your own digital channels.

Sander stressed that Europe has the expertise, the shared learnings, and the ecosystem commitment required to make Wero succeed.

The European skills, the shared feedback, and the community commitment are there, as Sander said. Start on time, because time is the one resource you cannot manufacture.

Corina reminded that the Wero community is open. Deutsche Bank and its peers are actively sharing implementation lessons. No institution needs to solve these challenges alone.  

The message was clear: the window to be a first mover is still open, but it will not remain open forever. 

This webinar recap only highlights the key points of the discussion. For the complete take on what merchants must do to prepare for an increasingly agent-driven future, including the insightful Q&A session at the end, watch the webinar recording here.

About Paula Albu

 

Paula Albu has experience in content writing and editing, as well as being a creative storyteller. As a Junior Editor at The Paypers, she investigates Web3 technologies along with the latest trends and regulations in banking and fintech. Paula is committed to turning complex industry topics into engaging, accessible content that resonates with readers and creates a meaningful connection. She is available via LinkedIn or at paula@thepaypers.com.

 

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