Adyen has joined the European Payments Initiative (EPI) as a principal member, a step aimed at expanding merchant acceptance of the Wero digital wallet across Europe.
According to the announcement, the move is intended to give consumers a fast, secure and straightforward way to pay at checkout, while helping to accelerate merchant adoption of the wallet across the region.
EPI was founded in 2020 by a group of European banks and payment service providers with the aim of building an independent, pan-European payment system based on instant account-to-account transfers. The initiative operates Wero, a digital wallet that runs on the SEPA instant credit transfer scheme and is designed to support P2P transfers, ecommerce payments, and, eventually, POS transactions.
Wero has been rolled out progressively across several European markets, beginning with peer-to-peer transfers in Germany and Belgium, followed by France. Ecommerce functionality has been introduced more recently, with in-store payments expected to follow. EPI has positioned Wero as an alternative to established international card schemes, as well as to domestic solutions such as iDEAL, Bizum, Blik, and Swish, some of which EPI has already acquired or absorbed into its offering.
Merchant acceptance and market context
Adyen's addition as a principal member follows a pattern of EPI extending its membership base beyond its founding bank shareholders to include payment platforms and acquirers with a role in merchant acceptance. Other companies that have joined EPI in a similar capacity include payment technology providers focused on integrating Wero into merchant-facing infrastructure.
For EPI, broadening its network of principal members is presented as a way of ensuring that Wero can be deployed efficiently at the point of sale and online, rather than relying solely on the founding bank shareholders to drive distribution. In addition, for Adyen, the membership extends its existing involvement in European payments infrastructure, adding a further A2A payment method to the range it already supports for merchants.
Implications for the European payments ecosystem
The announcement frames Adyen's membership within EPI's broader ambition of building what the initiative describes as a sovereign, competitive European payments ecosystem, one intended to reduce reliance on non-European payment schemes. Both organisations said they intend to continue working together on the development of payments in Europe, though no further operational or commercial details were disclosed at the time of the announcement.
