Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Welcome to FinTrends, the podcast series where we explore the hot trends and news in the financial sector with experts. Today we're talking about Wiro, Europe's account-to-account wallet, and how banks can turn regulatory readiness into real business value. With me are Fabrice from EPI and Nicolas from SBS. But before we dive in, Please, both of you, can you briefly introduce yourselves?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, with pleasure. Hello, Caroline. Hello, Nicolas. And thank you for inviting me to this podcast session. My name is Femris Lugal. I'm the country manager for Wiro in the French market. I'm in charge of driving the development and adoption of Wiro among the French financial institutions, both on the consumer side and in terms of merchant acceptance. Well, a few words about me. So I've joined the API journey two years ago. It's been an exciting and ambitious project. We are trying to tackle the fragmentation of payment habits across Europe, shaped by diverse culture and expectation, whether from consumer or bank.

• Speaker #2

  Thank you, Caroline. Thank you, Fabrice, for being here. My name is Nicolas Dejeuner. So I'm a lead product manager for open banking at SBS. So I handle everything that has to do with regulatory APIs, PSD2, PSD3 evolutions, but also digital payments with our Wero solution that we have available as of November for the different banks in the EU. So really happy to be here and try to share some of our insights about what is it that we have and what's the future of Wero.

• Speaker #0

  It's really nice to have you both on the set on FinTrans podcast to talk about Wero. I have a question for you, Fabrice, to introduce that podcast. I'd like to know the vision behind Wero and... Also, why is this the right moment for Europe?

• Speaker #1

  Yes, so Wiro is part of a broader European vision. After the SEPA in 2012, which streamlined payment flows between financial institutions in the Eurozone, Wiro is now addressing the fragmentation of payment habits services across Europe. Why it's a good moment for us? It's imagine a Europe where every euro spent in our economy stay within our economy, where our financial institutions are not dictated by external or foreign companies, but built by European people for European citizens. With a payment system set up by European people, we gain more than financial independence. We gain control, we gain trust, the data is regulated by our own rules, and we decide on our payment infrastructure. This isn't just about payment transactions, it's about sovereignty, innovation, in order to build a stronger Europe.

• Speaker #0

  On a more technical note, Nicolas, can you tell us what makes Wiro technically feasible?

• Speaker #2

  at scale yeah sure i mean i believe that Wero is feasible for many things but one of the main reasons is that first of all it lies on top of instant payment rails so that's something that people already use are accustomed to doing an instant payment for the past few years across Europe in different markets. This has been around for five or ten years. So reusing something that already exists makes it easier and feasible. We're not creating a brand new way of payment. It exists already. And the other element is mainly the fact that... it's also reusing the same trusted mobile applications from banks. So you don't need to also rebuild a new application from scratch and get people to use it on board and start learning about it. You have just, you're reusing your same app that customers are accustomed to and you just enable a new feature for payments. Customers already are aware of this type of wallet payments. So even if it's not technical, the fact that we have a lot of information from wallets across the globe makes it easier for customers to also feel safe about using um about using where the fact that it comes from a european initiative makes it also more feasible it makes there's more trust in on the system so as a consumer you will trust more this type of payment rails than any other because there is a backup behind and there's a lot of banks already using it so that makes it easier as well to say there's enough volume today to get more merchants to get more people excited about Wero and using it more and more. So the speed to market is always there. You don't need to rebuild everything. You don't lower TCO because you don't have to, again, rebuild instant payments or rebuild a new app. You're just adding features to it. And yeah, cross-border interoperability is also key because you're able to now pay in other countries, like before you were not able to do this. And also people from other countries can pay in your own country with their own apps. So that's also a key element of why it is feasible today to say that Wero is the future.

• Speaker #0

  Thank you EPI already works with Tier 1 banks. And I want to know for a Tier 2 or a Tier 3 bank, what are the practical options for joining Wiro?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, of course. So let me clarify a misunderstanding. So we are talking about EPI and Wiro. EPI is the European Payment Initiative. It's the scheme. regulatory and operational framework that financial institutions decided to join. And Wiro is the commercial brand of the payment services offered by EPI. Whether it's P2P to send payment between consumers or payment between individuals and merchants in e-commerce or in post-solution. To join EPI, each institution must decide which kind of license fits to their needs. It could be an issuing license to enable its customers to use Wiro. We are talking about consumer PSP license. It could be also an acceptance license to allow merchants to accept a Wiro payment with an acceptor PSP license. Next to that, EPI offers two levels of membership. So there is the principal member license. As a principal member, you actively take part in the workshop that shaped the rulebook and the roadmap. Institutions aren't just passive implementers. They are co-creators of this framework. This gives them the opportunity to align European standards with real market needs and their own strategic priority. The second type of license is what we call an associate member. As an associate member, of course, you have a more limited involvement in the scheme, but benefit from a lower licensing cost compared to principal member.

• Speaker #0

  Nicolas, can you tell us where do banks usually stumble when enabling Wiro?

• Speaker #2

  I would say there's maybe a top four action. Our point of attention, let's say, that banks have to have in mind, mainly around orchestration, identity, and managing rapid changes for the roadmaps. So teams often underestimate the complexity of orchestration, the many different systems that you have to do, the wallet logic, the fraud checks, internal data services, all sitting between the user's click and the instant payment rail. So there's a lot of things happening in the middle that you need to be aware and you need to be conscious that You need a powerful tool to be able to manage that and avoid user drop-offs in that sense. You also have a second, let's say, attention point around cross-border identity mapping, like linking your phone, your email to your IBAN across different borders. For peer-to-peer, it could be complex, especially when you factor the data quality, the governance and layers needed for dispute handling at scale. You also have a high rate of evolution, so where it's not static. Of course, it's going to evolve. There's a roadmap and new features coming in. So banks will have to face that evolution as well, continuous change as they move from peer-to-peer to e-commerce to advanced payment plans and soon as well POS. So they need a proper roadmap to be able to do this. It's not a one-off project and then you're just waiting. You always have to be actively doing changes. And of course, there's as well the merchant experience gap to drive initial adoption. Banks need more than just the payment button. They essentially need more features that push merchants and also users to start going to that merchant to pay. So visibility, of course, reconciliation tools, dispute management tools, all of that is usually afterthoughts. We think about those features after we've launched many times, but those are also key elements so that the customer trusts the whole service and will continue to use it. So those are the main key factors. of attention that I would say today. And of course, our products solve most of those by providing pre-built orchestration, governed proxy services, version conformance pack. So banks focus on the go-live and the growth and the UX experience. And we handle mainly the backend rewiring in that sense.

• Speaker #0

  Talking about new features, Procure2Pay is now live. So what is next in terms of rollout and merchant adoption? Fabrice.

• Speaker #1

  Yes, you're right. P2P is live. Live with 45 millions of European citizens. That means that they are reachable, so they can either receive or send a P2P money transfer. We are... We have around, for the three core markets, 30-35 members that are mostly principal members, but we are starting to onboard associate members. It's just the beginning. of course, because several major institutions, especially in France, are still to be onboarded. And we are also planning to expand. We have a geographical expansion on the roadmap. Our playground is the Eurozone. So in theory, we could onboard every country. But for the time being, the e-commerce launch is underway. is underway. We are seeing the first transaction in Germany. Belgium will follow in January, and the time will be for France in October 2026. Please also note that in the summer of 2026, we will start some pilots, the Wiro wallet. So users, some users involved in the pilot will be able to pay in store using their own Wiro wallet.

• Speaker #0

  What about you, Nicolas? What is your product's role here and what do banks actually buy from SBS?

• Speaker #2

  To keep it simple, they buy just a turnkey API solution. So something that sits in front of their systems, in front of their instant payment rails, to bring all the features from Wero, from API, back to the user. So again, to give all this new payment experience back to the user, which is key for banks to be there. so if your customer wants to pay using Wero you have to have have it you cannot not have it right and that's the the future so again api api apps facing api so again to power the flows peer-to-peer peer-to-pro em commerce pay in-store payments and also using different means of identifying who you're paying whether through a qr code or proxy management that's something we we give banks to allow them to just connect simply to those apis and the flow will happen in the background so we do all the orchestration we have we do all the face connection to our EPI so that we will connect to EPI in a secure way and bring everything that we need to to execute the full flow and everything has to do with operational guardrails security telemetry limiting rate limiting and we connect to your core banking systems as well to get those information to make sure that the system is safe so again it's a turnkey solution to go from I only have instant payment to I actually have a wallet where experience from a client that have all the features and know the availability of those pretty quickly.

• Speaker #0

  Nicolas, you were talking about security, and as well as compliance and trust. Security is critical when it comes to financial services. So I'm wondering, Fabrice, how is EPI addressing this at a scheme level?

• Speaker #1

  Of course, our first priority is to establish trust, trust and that's exactly what we have done with the launch of our p2p server Keep in mind that the Wiro transaction consists in two key layers. We are an overlay acceptance layer between two parties. It's managed by us, by the rulebook, and implemented by the financial institution. And the second layer is the settlement itself, the instant payment layer that is managed by the financial institution, by the banks. both parties were individual or merchant must have been onboarded by their own bank using their internal kyc process so us as a scheme we rely on the the internal roles of our of our member to to to have all of the information about their the the users a few days ago the VOP has been implemented and We, as EP, already have implemented the verification of pay because if you want to use Wiro, for example, if you type a phone number on either your mobile banking app or on the standalone app Wiro that you have downloaded on the stores, you will type a phone number and there is a lookup if the phone number or the proxy exists in our database. If it's the case, it will show up who is on the line on the other side. side by showing the name with some obfuscation according to the internal rules of the bank, and if not, it will say so this proxy number is not reachable. So that means there is nobody on the other side. That's an element of truth for the users and for the settlement of the transaction itself.

• Speaker #0

  What is different in your approach to security at the bank level, Nicolas?

• Speaker #2

  Just to take the last point from Fabrice, I think... mainly the verification of payee that comes behind every instant payment payment actually is bringing already a lot of trust and confidence of the of the cost consumer so they know that in the back when they're paying somebody it has been verified that i'm paying the right person so that already is pretty big from the business case perspective let's say the customers understand that and the And the fact that it's also unknown European initiative also brings trust and inherently security. because you believe that the rule books, the specifications, and how that product has been thought about or created have come with already the highest levels of security, let's say, design in the background. But from the product perspective, we have mainly an approach of zero-trust design. That means that every system, external, internal, connected to our different flows at different levels, are verified and we don't trust anybody calling our system so that means that every time somebody calls us even if it's internal products we're going to re-ask let's say their key to make sure that they're the right service calling the right person to avoid somebody changing anything in the middle or an attack we will know that something has been changed and again that's the zero trust approach we also have everything has to do with security on mutual TLS we have deterministic signings to again make sure that everything that we've given is for the right person and there's no changes on on those keys event logs which allows you to of course have an audit trail a strong audit trail if something happens there's a dispute you need to be able to prove who what at what time did what uh you know step so that's really important for banks and as well the resilience of the platform the fact that it can handle spikes of uh traffic at different moments and holiday season christmas or you know Black Friday is really important that your product is scalable. and strong enough to be able to sustain that. And by still doing all the security checks, even if you have 10, 20, 50 times more connection that second, your system still needs to perform all of those checks in a fast way to avoid taking any risks. So those are the main things. So security isn't a gate, it's a growth enabler. And the customers will feel that this is a secure system, so they will continue to use it.

• Speaker #0

  For the story, I am a user of Wiro and I'm very fond of it. so I want to know what's going to be the future of Wiro so Fabrice can you tell us what does success look like for Wiro in the next 12 to 18 months?

• Speaker #1

  Well over the next 12 months in 2026 we will offer the P2P payment in additional banks so we will onboard new members for sure we will roll out e-commerce in our three core markets France, Germany and Belgium and complete the migration of the ideal payment services in the Netherlands. We will also finalize the migration from Peconic in the Belgium area. And in the summer the Wiro wallet will become visible for some users in pilot with some merchants and banks. and At the end we will prepare the onboarding of new countries like Austria. But that's not all. We will also much greater clarity on the timeline for the implementation and interoperability between us, Wiro, and the Europea initiative, which is a technical hub that we are writing the specification precisely. Europea is the joint... of portuguese spain and italy that will allow a wiro user to pay in a merchant store could be e-commerce or a bus and the revert will be also possible a bzoom user will be able to pay in a merchant that is onboarding in wiro from your perspective nicola what's the long-term upside for balance

• Speaker #0

  investing in Wiro.

• Speaker #2

  For us, we think Wero is fundamentally a platform move for banks. So once the wallet rail exists, they can layer new value, merchant services, loyalty programs, subscriptions, data insights, because they are controlling everything from end to end. So all under a strong European governance model. It's about owning the daily habits again, being the app customers use for peer-to-peer, checkout and in-store payments. Fundamentally improve unit economics by shifting high volume payments away from legacy card fees. And API expands across more markets. As Fabrice just said, the same as where integration scales, you're totally rich. So the more markets they reach, the more places your clients can actually go and pay or transfer money. So that automatically gives them a broader reach. And so our mission is to compress that journey from supporting instant payments to delivering a monetizable wallet-grade experience. It's just not compliance, it's growth with control. That's what we believe and everything that... is on the roadmap from epi will help banks achieve more and that's where we'll continue to you know improve our solution in that same level of uh of that roadmap with every single new country interoperability as herbie said is key as well because it allows customers to quickly gain access to other markets like we said in spain with users using bzoom okay so they can they'll be able to also use Wero payments so merchants in both countries can also earn a lot more from tourism and customers coming from other countries that they can pay with the same app in that same merchants so everybody wins in this ecosystem that's what we see thanks to you for your insights i'd like to wrap up this podcast with one final thought what

• Speaker #0

  is one thing you want a bank executive to remember after this conversation well for europe to feel united in payment the user must philips

• Speaker #1

  so Wero makes that possible so for a bank you don't need to wait the path to join is already there

• Speaker #0

  What about you Nicolas?

• Speaker #2

  I think that understanding our clients which are our banks we understand the amount of work they have in different sectors for different products a lot of regulation coming their way so they have a lot of things to do on a daily basis so for Wero we believe that we can be their best allies to again launch fast scale and stay compliant without having to rebuild from scratch. So if they want to go this path, they can think about us and we can help them go to market faster.

• Speaker #0

  Thanks to you both for your insights. If you want to know more about Wiro, open banking, and the road to real-time payments in Europe, stay connected with SBS and EPI.

• Speaker #1

  Thank you, Caroline. Thank you, Fabrice. Thank you, Caroline. Thank you, Nicolas.