EPI and EuroPA join forces in push for European payments sovereignty

Editorial

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The move signals 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 late last year, 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.

Now, EuroPA and EPI are investigating a joint offering that would combine their efforts to cover all use cases – person-to-person and commercial payments both online and in-store – across the markets of the participating services.

A study is set to be completed by the end of the summer into an agreement that will initially cover 15 European countries, collectively representing over 382 million inhabitants (84% of the EU population and Norway), enabling them to continue using their preferred digital payment options both locally and across Europe.

The two bodies argue that interconnecting existing systems is a “rapid path forward to European [payments] sovereignty and independence,” something which BNP Paribas COO Thierry Laborde recently warned is “no longer a future ambition, it is a European necessity”.