The UK Payments Delivery Company will this week launch a process to raise in the region of £50m to fund the development of a new domestic infrastructure player, Sky News learns.
Britain’s biggest banks will this week embark on a process to raise tens of millions of pounds to fund the development of a new payments infrastructure vehicle that could ultimately evolve into a domestic alternative to Mastercard and Visa.
We’ve had a comparable system to Wero in Switzerland for about a decade (called Twint) and the conglomerate who owns it already signaled they would enable cross-payment with Wero if Wero is interested, so I wouldn’t rule out that it grows beyond the EU. Nothing concrete has been agreed so far, though, at least not publicly.
EuroPA (European Payment Alliance) agreed to cooperate with Wero last year. EuroPA represents Portugal, Spain, Poland, Italy, Hungary, Nordic countries and I think Romania. None of those countries will adapt Wero, they will work to make their systems compatible. Systems from outside EU can also be compatible with Wero but it’s clear that other countries are not interested in implementing it directly.