The European Payments Initiative (EPI), the company behind the Wero wallet, has joined nexo standards, a Brussels-based association that writes open specifications for how payment terminals, checkout systems, and acquirers exchange data. EPI announced the membership on Thursday, October 8, 2026, saying the move supports its ambition “to make Wero practical for merchants to accept across European markets.” Börsen-Zeitung, the German financial daily, described the goal as making Wero acceptable over existing checkout and terminal infrastructure.
nexo’s protocols are built on ISO 20022, the financial messaging standard. First written for card acceptance, they have since been extended to mobile wallets, QR code payments, and instant payments at the point of interaction, according to nexo. EPI says membership will also let it follow how those standards are used for account-to-account payments, the model Wero runs on. At NRF Europe in Paris in September, EPI demonstrated a Wero payment by QR code on a terminal running a nexo-based acceptance environment. It now plans its in-store rollout across markets for 2027, with NFC integration to come “in the long run.”
“Europe’s payment ambitions need to translate into practical choices for consumers and businesses,” EPI CEO Martina Weimert said. “For Wero, that means building a European solution that merchants can accept across different markets and payment environments and offered by all banks across the continent.”
Visa, Mastercard, and France’s big banks already belong to nexo
nexo standards was formed in 2014 from the merger of three bodies that wrote payment acceptance specifications. Its principal members include Visa , Mastercard , American Express AMEX, Nexi Payments, Euro Kartensysteme, the company behind Germany’s girocard, GIE Cartes Bancaires CB, which runs France’s domestic card scheme, and French banks BNP Paribas, BPCE Payment Services, Crédit Agricole, and Crédit Mutuel. Adyen and Worldline are associate members, Bancontact Payconiq Company is an observer, and the European Central Bank (ECB) sits in as a nonvoting counselor.
nexo has three membership tiers, from observers, who pay €2,000 a year and get no access to draft specifications, to principal members, who pay €20,000 and are the only ones to vote at the general assembly. EPI did not say which tier it joined. On October 9, nexo’s online member list did not yet include EPI.
Wero works at the checkout in only two countries
So far, Wero works at the checkout only in Belgium and Luxembourg, according to Börsen-Zeitung. In Belgium, EPI announced at NRF Europe on September 16, as Paypedia reported from the Paris show, that payment provider Payworld had joined the providers enabling Belgian merchants to accept Wero, with shoppers scanning a Wero QR code displayed on the terminal. In Luxembourg, where Wero is replacing Payconiq, Payconiq QR codes in stores and on invoices remain usable through Wero until the end of the year, the same release said. It also described Wero as already available in Germany in “specific physical-payment environments,” including EV charging.
Germany has no date, the paper added, although the in-store launch there was first announced for mid-2026. EPI’s September 16 release said broader point-of-sale availability in France and Germany was planned progressively from 2027. The boilerplate at the foot of the October 8 release still reads: “Point-of-sale payments will also be offered in 2026.”
60 million users, and no count of active payers
EPI credits Wero with 60 million users in the body of its release and 59 million in the “About Wero” note at its foot. Börsen-Zeitung noted that EPI discloses no figure for how many of them actively pay. EPI also plans migrations of at least 15 million consumers from Payconiq in Luxembourg by 2026 and from iDEAL in the Netherlands by 2027. The iDEAL switch was first targeted for the end of 2026, according to Börsen-Zeitung.