Bancomat, Bizum, SIBS-MB WAY and Vipps MobilePay (all of which are members of the EuroPA Alliance) and EPI Company (EPI) jointly announce today the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), marking a decisive step towards strengthening Europe’s payment sovereignty.

At launch, the initiative will span 13 European countries[1], collectively already covering ~72% of the European Union and Norway population. The coalition is open to all European countries, including Switzerland and other non-euro markets

Following the MoU, the partners will establish the central interoperability entity by H1 2026, will start preparing the technical implementation of the target set-up, and conduct proof‑of‑concepts (PoCs) in parallel.

Coverage of all use cases is intented by 2027 through a phased rollout:

• In 2026: rollout of peer-to-peer (P2P) cross-border payments

• In 2027: rollout of e-commerce and point-of-sale (POS) payments

[1] Andorra, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.

What Europe needs is its own payment card network to step up against the quasi dupoly of MasterCard and Visa (AmEx and Discovery aren't that widely used or even available in Europe)

The Dutch banks have started replacing iDeal with Wero as of this year. So far it appears to only be a change of the logo and I think it will be fully adopted in a year or so.

In Switzerland we have Twint, it’s widely used, most people have it and use it daily, I’m shocked they didn’t try to jump into it with the other ones