Europäischer Bezahldienst: Wero kaum bekannt: Deutsche nutzen Paypal-Alternative selten
Europa will beim Bezahlen unabhängiger von den USA werden. Wero soll als Alternative zu Paypal und Co. aufgebaut werden. Doch viele kennen das Angebot zwei Jahre nach seiner Einführung nicht.
Two years after its launch, the European alternative to PayPal, called Wero, remains unknown to most Germans. A representative survey conducted by Verivox in July found that only just over four out of ten adults (39 percent) correctly identified Wero as a payment service. Nearly a third (31 percent) of the 1,002 respondents had never heard of Wero, while four out of ten (23 percent) recognized the term but were unsure of its meaning.
The remaining 7 percent confused Wero with various options, including a currency trading app, a savings app, a wooden credit card, or a legitimization service.
The European Payments Initiative (EPI), a consortium of banks and payment service providers, aims to make Wero a European PayPal alternative. Since its launch at the beginning of July 2024, Wero has primarily offered direct mobile payments from person to person, similar to PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other similar services.
However, a majority of respondents (58 percent) doubt that Wero will succeed in becoming the most popular payment service in Europe. Oliver Maier, CEO of Verivox Finanzvergleich GmbH, said that Wero can only deliver real value if consumers can easily use it for payments everywhere, both online and offline.
The EPI currently has 57 million registered Wero users in Belgium, France, and Germany, with 9 million in Germany alone. For comparison, PayPal has 35 million active customer accounts in Germany. Efforts are underway to roll out Wero in more European countries: In the Netherlands, the transition from the local online payment system iDEAL to Wero is underway.
In Luxembourg, Wero will gradually replace Payconiq, which is set to officially launch in September. Austria is expected to join the list of countries by the end of 2027. However, there is still a long way to go for Wero, as even among the 395 survey participants in Germany who knew about Wero, nearly two-thirds (64.8 percent) had not yet tried the payment service.
Written by urgent.news from Handelsblatt's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
