European payment initiative creates Giropay replacement — meet WERO

Recently, fintech industry was literally shocked by the news of Giropay payment method closure in Germany. Although we knew it as one of the popular and in-demand methods for payments among Germans, market situation showed that it did not live up to expectations.

Europe is concerned about an active penetration of American payment giants into its internal market, with PayPal being the main competitor. This situation has had such a strong impact on European banks and fintech companies that they immediately set out to fix it. What they did: they came up with their own e-wallet analog, which is named WERO. The technology and flow under the payment method will be practically identical to the well-known System of Fast Payments in Russia. Users will be able to make payments using their mobile phone number without the need to enter an IBAN. By the way, the EU is one of those regions where usability of payment systems was considered last. Bureaucracy has always been top priority, and that's why we see the results of such policies today: very complex banking applications that are impossible to comprehend on the first try and persistent need to send payments by IBAN account. Of course, this procedure led to users making many mistakes in the IBANs themselves, and payments were either returned or not sent at all. This resulted in waste of time and a negative user experience, not to mention extra work for the entire banking sector.

WERO is considered a very promising development that will not only achieve payment autonomy from American fintech companies but also, according to the plan, provide good competition to Visa and Mastercard payment cards. At least, that's what the banks unwillingly pay commissions to International Payment Systems are aiming for. The transition to alternative payment methods is interesting to everyone: both financial institutions and users.

Let's add that such a payment method in the EU is indeed an innovation. Brazilians with PIX might be surprised, but that's how it is. Design of application is very bright and clear; its creators have obviously worked hard to make something different from regular bank interfaces. Plus, payments will be sent 24/7 and in less than 10 seconds of time. If we compare this to a standard bank transfer, we can clearly see the reasons for such confidence in success of this development.

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