Payment News

European Banks Lag on A2A and Instant Payments

The European Payments Initiative (EPI) is a Europe-wide bank-backed venture set up to build a European rival to Mastercard and Visa. It has begun rolling out its Wero mobile-first wallet and instant account-to- account payments (A2A) system.

Wero is trying to emulate the success of Pix in Brazil and UPI in India, taking on the challenge of cards. Cap Gemini has estimated that A2A payments could take 15-25% of future card transaction volume growth, and EPI’s Wero wallet is likely to accelerate adoption of A2A payments across Europe.

Banks are wary of instant payment adoption because they lack robust fraud defences and have liquidity concerns.

As a result, only 25% of banks can receive instant payments and 53% are fully capable of sending and receiving them. Only 13% have strong technology foundations for instant payments, despite the October 2025 Instant Payment Regulation (IPR) deadline mandating that all have to offer full functionality.