The largest banks of the European Union have created their own payment system Wero, which intends to replace Visa and Mastercard. EU financial companies have been secretly working on the development for years.
As transmits Bloomberg, Wero supports 16 major banks and payment systems, including BNP Paribas SA, Deutsche Bank AG and Worldline SA. The platform will allow customers to instantly pay for services using their own bank accounts instead of Visa or Mastercard cards.
If the companies succeed in rolling out Wero across Europe, it could cost the two payments giants billions of dollars in lost fees. Currently, the project is starting to spread in the countries of Western Europe.
Martina Weimert, chief executive of the European Payments Initiative behind Wero, called the platform a startup. However, Weimert emphasized that Wero already has 500 million euros of investment and a ready customer base from participants in the banking sector.
Previously, for many years, the European Commission, acting as the EU’s antitrust authority, conducted a thorough investigation into the dominance of Visa and Mastercard in the market and their pricing practices. The investigation ended with both companies committing to significantly lower their multilateral commissions (by an average of 40%).
