It’s not often that seven French banking groups (BNP Paribas, BPCE, Crédit Agricole, Crédit Mutuel-Alliance Fédérale, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, La Banque Postale and Société Générale) come together to promote a common project.
Such will be the case at the start of this fall with the roll-out in France of the Wero electronic wallet, the fruit of years of negotiations between banks on a continental scale, and destined in time to rival the major international Visa and Mastercard card payment schemes, as well as new players in online payment such as PayPal, or mobile payment such as Apple and Google.
Wero, the brand name of the European Payments Initiative (EPI) consortium, which brings together German, French and Benelux banks, has already been operational in Germany for several weeks. In France, its launch has already been announced to the customers of several of the banks involved in the project. Only La Banque Postale has opted for the Wero app, as it is preparing a major overhaul of its own app.
Several other banking establishments are set to join the network in the coming months, EPI president Martina Weimert told Le Monde, including Hello Bank, Fortuneo and Crédit Lyonnais.
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Initially, Wero will only be used for payments between private individuals, drawing on the existing user base of Paylib, the French family and friends payment specialist with 15 million active users per month and €6 billion exchanged over the last 12 months.
Like Paylib, Wero will enable you to send money to a contact by entering a mobile number or e-mail address all in 10 seconds, which is in line with the requirements of the new European regulation on instant payments due to come into force in January 2025. The two services will be compatible until Paylib’s demise, scheduled for the first months of 2025.
The new service will be gradually enriched with additional functions, such as money request and QR code generation, which will eliminate the need to pass on a telephone number.
But the project’s ambition goes much further: EPI, which brings together 14 banks from five countries (Germany, Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) representing 64% of retail payments in Europe, plans to extend its use to payments by independent professionals without payment terminals in 2025, and then to e-commerce and in-store payments from 2026. Time enough to acclimatize consumers to its use and, above all, to integrate the many technical and financial service providers involved, between merchants and banks, in the electronic payment chain.
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Source link : https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2024/10/02/first-steps-in-france-for-wero-the-european-electronic-wallet_6727950_19.html
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Publish date : 2024-10-02 03:57:59
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