Wero’s iDEAL challenge - TWIF UK & Europe (07/04)

Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

If you are based in London, don’t forget to sign up for our London Fintech Breakfast on April 16th. Coffee, food, and networking with the London fintech community at Granola’s place. It’d be great to see you there.

Wero is one of the most interesting projects in European payments. 

Seeking to challenge the dominance of US-based card schemes, Wero is a European-wide account-to-account payment scheme that operates on existing SEPA Instant payment rails. It's backed by large banks and acquirers, and operated by the European Payments Initiative (EPI).

The goal is a European-wide account-to-account payment scheme, used by consumers across the continent, and accepted by merchants with an ubiquity that no non-card payment scheme has achieved to date.

There are, of course, successful existing single-country payment systems in Europe, such as Swish in Sweden, Blik in Poland, and iDEAL in the Netherlands. Some of the existing success stories will remain independent, but others will transition over to Wero.

So far, Paylib (France), Giropay (Germany), and Payconiq (Luxembourg and Belgium) were all decommissioned at the end of 2025 and migrated to Wero. Arguably, these were all schemes that were either declining or had limited reach. iDEAL is also set to migrate, but it's a different proposition entirely. It is the dominant payment method in the Dutch e-commerce market.

iDEAL is due to be decommissioned by 2028, with all users migrating to Wero. The migration path has, and will, follow something like this: 

In the Dutch press and on LinkedIn, debate has been building in recent weeks, because Wero introduces features and changes that were not present in iDEAL. 

Wero introduces a consumer dispute and purchase protection mechanism — something iDEAL has never had. While for consumers this is a good thing, and something they are used to with cards, for PSPs this means more credit risk, and merchants may face stricter onboarding requirements.

Also, it's anticipated that Wero's pricing will be higher than iDEAL's. iDEAL has a fixed per-item model, whereas Wero is likely to have a fee with a % component, meaning that for some merchants it will be more expensive to accept payments, while for others it may be cheaper than the existing pricing.

With any payment transition, you get winners and losers. European payments sovereignty has become a hot topic, but the question comes down to whether a local, e.g., country-specific system is better than a continent-wide system. 

In today’s world, there are good reasons for Europe to have a continent-wide payment champion, yet local habits die hard — especially when the existing modus operandi works so well. Many discussions about account-to-account (A2A) payments and Open Banking often highlight that merchants benefit. Yet in the case of Wero, it’s curious to see complaints from merchants and those who traditionally benefit from non-card payments growing.

The Netherlands has an existing A2A payment system, which works well and is popular with both merchants and consumers. Merchants will now have to deal with chargebacks and a new commercial model. This is the challenge of standardising across a continent.

Please find another week of fintech news, financings, and exits below!

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Highlights below of deals since the last post in the fintech space across the UK & Europe. Deal data powered by Dealroom.

Kulipa raised $6.2m to build stablecoin-native card-issuing infrastructure — the Paris-based company aims to make onchain balances more usable through everyday payment rails. The round was co-led by Flourish Ventures and 1kx, with participation from White Star Capital and Fabric Ventures.

AI-powered credit data platform 9fin raised $170m in Series C funding at a $1.3bn valuation, making it Europe’s latest fintech unicorn — the round was led by HarbourVest, with participation from Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments)

Midas raised $50m to build tokenised investment infrastructure — the round was led by RRE and Creandum, with backing from Coinbase Ventures and Franklin Templeton 

Brickken has secured €3m in pre-series A funding to expand its asset tokenisation platform — investors including Marco Podini, who made a personal investment (Founder and Executive Chairman of Italian technology group Dedagroup S.p.A.) 

Grand raised $5m in pre-seed funding to build what it describes as a real-world payment network — the round was led by 20VC, with participation from NAP and Firedrop

🇬🇧  NatWest and Sainsbury’s announced a new partnership, which will allow customers of the supermarket chain to access a range of new financial products, many of which are linked to the Nectar loyalty programme

🇬🇧 🇪🇺 🌍 Monzo is shutting down its US operations to refocus on European markets

🇪🇺  CaixaBank has launched crypto investment services, allowing customers to buy Bitcoin via Exchange Traded Products, through investment vehicles managed by Invesco and Wisdom Tree

🌍 Global issuer-processor Paymentology and local neo-bank Bank Zero have partnered to expand access to South Africa’s financial ecosystem

🌍 Russia’s VPN crackdown reportedly triggered a major banking outage

🇬🇧 Freetrade has expanded its product set by launching a Junior ISA — this allows parents to invest £9,000 each tax year, with all growth and income free from UK tax

🇬🇧 Two UK fintechs, Vibepay and SmartLayer shut down, highlighting a tough start to the year as March saw ethical banking app Zero also close down 

🌍 Drift Protocol said a $270m exploit was the result of a six-month North Korean intelligence operation

🌍 CoinShares entered US public markets via Nasdaq following its $1.2bn Vine Hill SPAC merger, giving public investors an additional chance for crypto exposure

🌍 A Google paper warned that crypto faces growing quantum risk ahead of a possible 2029 timeline, reviving questions around long-term wallet and blockchain security

🌍 Convera is tapping Ripple for stablecoin-based cross-border payments

🌍 Swift said its blockchain-based shared ledger will go live with real transactions this year 

Mapping every “Copilot” product that Microsoft has - Tey Bannermans

Why has ChatGPT’s app store struggled to make an impact? - Bloomberg

What went wrong with ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout - Modern Retail

Iran Strikes Leave Amazon Availability Zones “Hard Down” in Bahrain and Dubai - Big Technology (interesting to consider the impact that this may have on fintech)