The European payment network already exists
A company from Switzerland can do what banks want to achieve with Wero: make payments possible across Europe. Why do they not use the system that already exists?
Europe is dependent on the United States. Nowhere is this more evident than in payments: for example, anyone who pulls out a smartphone at the checkout often pays with Apple Pay; online, customers store a Mastercard or Visa card; and they send money to friends with Paypal. According to the European Central Bank (ECB), non-European providers processed around 61 percent of card payments in Europe in 2022. European banks want to change this and are currently building a network intended to make it possible for people from Germany to pay in Spain with the new payment service Wero, and vice versa. Without Visa, Mastercard or Paypal.
Europe has apparently managed to get moving and develop something together. But the fact is also this: the Swiss company Bluecode can already do what Wero and its partners want to build over the coming years.
Roaming for payments instead of mobile communications
Behind Bluecode is Christian Pirkner. The entrepreneur, who lives in Switzerland, worked in Silicon Valley and helped develop two start-ups there that were, among other things, instrumental in the later success of the music recognition software Shazam. In 2011, he founded Bluecode with the idea of making Europe independent of US payment solutions; the Hopp family (SAP) later came on board as an investor. At the time of its founding, hardly anyone in the EU Commission was talking about sovereignty in payments, and Wero would not come to market until 13 years later. Instead, many European countries at that time had, at most, national payment systems, which were exactly that: national.
In Germany, for example, there is the Girocard, and in France the Carte Bancaire. Both are very popular, but they do not work abroad and, in some cases, not online either, which is why people were always dependent on Visa or Mastercard. Pirkner now wanted to build a “roaming network”, very similar to the mobile communications market. There, too, someone from Germany can make calls in France without having to take out a new contract. This is made possible by an interface in the background.
When paying, people should now get the same feeling: simply scan a QR code or hold their phone up to a terminal and trigger a payment that is then automatically “roamed” across Europe in the background. On paper, such a solution makes sense because it excludes US companies, saves fees, reduces data collection and builds on existing systems. Technically, however, it is not at all that easy to implement.
The banks do not want to give up control
In 2019, Bluecode joined forces with already successful payment solutions such as Swish from Sweden to form an alliance that wanted to develop a common standard for this roaming. It was presented in 2022 and technically developed by Bluecode. Since then, Payment Roaming has worked in theory. But the major breakthrough has not materialized; many banks remained cautious — particularly in Germany, says Christian Pirkner. Even today, the entrepreneur is surprised that the European banking sector largely left this opportunity unused, especially since European sovereignty in payments is now being discussed at all levels. In his view, the reluctance was political: “They always said that such an infrastructure solution had to come from banks or from the state, and I am neither.”
Since interest in Europe remained modest, Pirkner decided to expand into Asia. There, the payment service provider Alipay, among others, joined the idea. In the United States, Pirkner found partners including the Diners Card. He connected dozens of these payment solutions through his “roaming” and today makes it possible for customers to pay at more than 160 million locations worldwide, for example in India, Brazil and soon also China. That is more merchants than Visa has worldwide, for example. In Germany, too, customers can pay with Bluecode through these cooperation partners at Aldi Süd or Adidas.
This means Bluecode’s infrastructure is significantly further advanced than Wero, for example. Through the service of the European Payments Initiative (EPI), which is backed among others by the Sparkassen, payments at the store checkout are not expected to be possible until 2027. And to ensure that this also works in Spain and Italy, Wero has joined forces with another alliance and is now building what Bluecode already is: an infrastructure for payments across national borders. The question remains why the European banks do not simply rely on Bluecode. Süddeutsche Zeitung wanted to ask Wero, but has not received an answer so far.
Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 9, 2026, 9:22 a.m., by Nils Heck, Cologne
URL: www.sz.de/li.3492783
Copyright: Süddeutsche Zeitung Digitale Medien GmbH / Süddeutsche Zeitung GmbH
Source: SZ
