Martina Weimert was in the right place at the right time when she was appointed CEO of the EPI Company (European Payment Initiative) in 2020. As a consultant for Oliver Wyman, she had been involved in the European payment sovereignty project from the very beginning. Joachim Schmalzl, a member of the DSGV Executive Board responsible for the savings bank sector, asked her whether she could imagine taking on the role of operational leadership in setting up EPI. She could, and with her fundamental belief in European integration, she set to work as head of EPI.

With considerable perseverance, she has since navigated the depths of a joint project that, like any good start-up, began just above the zero line. Today, Martina Weimert is ready to present the first foundations for a cross-border online payment system with the Wero brand. Following peer-to-peer payments, Wero is now also available for e-commerce with the first online retailers. She announced that marketing measures will be launched at the end of the first quarter, as Wero should then be widely and extensively accepted by retailers.

So things are looking bright for Wero. However, the setup was difficult – and one doesn't even want to know how many mediating discussions Weimert had to conduct to keep everything together. To understand where EPI stands today with Wero, you need to take a quick look at the founding story: launched in mid-2020 by 16 banks, the plan was actually to create a Europe-wide payment card, which would have required large investments and might have jeopardised the existence of national card schemes. In spring 2023, a number of institutions, including Commerzbank, withdrew – and the national payment solutions Bizum (Spain), Bancomat (Italy) and Sibs (Portugal) broke away and founded the European Payments Alliance (EuroPA), which, like EPI, has set itself the goal of developing a uniform European payment solution. EPI then scaled back its concept to the online payment system Wero.

So there is a competing event. But Martina Weimert is already working on bringing together what belongs together. Since May, she has been working on a partnership with the national schemes of EuroPA to integrate them interoperably for cross-border payments, which can then be made via the usual app or the Wero app. Mobile payment services from Scandinavia, Greece and Poland also joined EuroPA in 2025. It is important to increase pan-European coverage in terms of acceptance in retail: four countries would then become a dozen, which would mean that almost 80% of the European population would be connected to each other in terms of payment technology via a pure EU infrastructure. And there are also small euro countries that do not have a national scheme and will be happy to onboard Wero or EuroPA.

At conferences, Martina Weimert is often introduced as one of the busiest people in the European economy. That's probably true, as she has an extremely tight schedule, but without ever seeming rushed. It must be a bit of a relief for her that Wero is now putting one building block after another in place and the roadmap for the future is set: she wants to bring Austria and Luxembourg on board and finalise the design for the cooperation platform so that Bizum and Co can be launched. With iDeal, a network of almost 250,000 merchants will soon be migrated to the Wero platform, which processes transactions for 15 million Dutch people. In addition, at least 15 new banks are expected to join in 2026.

The really big challenge will come in mid-2026, when the first stage in brick-and-mortar retail is set to be launched, which is a completely different ball game from the integration of online retail, where purchasing behaviour is more predictable with the placement of the buy button. It has to work smoothly at the checkout – and shoppers are used to being rewarded with goodies such as cashback. Wero and its partner banks need to be prepared for this. Martina Weimert now faces the challenge of solving the chicken-and-egg problem that every new platform encounters. Affiliated retailers are waiting for customers who have installed the Wero app and will generate sales for them. An initial conclusion can be drawn at the end of 2026.