Wero is a payment service from the European Payments Initiative (EPI), a coalition of major European banks. The goal is clear: to create a single, unified payment method that works across all of Europe. The ambition is for Wero to become a viable alternative to global players like Visa, Mastercard and PayPal.
At its core, Wero offers what iDEAL already does: simple, fast and secure payments directly from your bank account. On top of that, it introduces new features such as:
The name Wero combines the English words “we” and “euro,” with a nod to the Latin “vero” (true), to emphasize its reliability and European roots.
While iDEAL has been a success story in the Netherlands, it remains a national solution. For consumers and companies operating across borders, this presents limitations. European banks also want to reduce dependence on non-European payment providers.
That’s why it has been agreed that iDEAL will be integrated into Wero in 2026 and fully phased out by the end of 2027. In other words, by 2027 all iDEAL merchants will need to have transitioned to Wero. For end users, the payment experience will largely remain the same, familiar and secure, but behind the scenes, a European infrastructure will be in place that enables much more.
Wero is already live in Belgium, Germany and France, and is being rolled out gradually across the continent. As the successor to iDEAL, Wero is designed to unify Europe's fragmented payment systems into one pan-European solution.
The shift from iDEAL to Wero is more than a rebranding exercise. It represents a step toward a harmonized European payment landscape, where transactions are processed in the same way across all countries: fast, safe and transparent.
What does that mean in practice?