Wero payment service little known in Germany, survey finds

Despite efforts to establish it as a European alternative to PayPal, the payment service Wero is barely known among Germans, two years after its launch. A representative survey conducted in July for the comparison portal Verivox revealed that only 39% of adult respondents could correctly identify Wero as a payment service.

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Only just under four out of ten adults (39 percent) could correctly assign in a representative survey for the comparison portal Verivox in July that Wero is a payment service.

Further highlighting its low recognition, nearly a third of the 1,002 participants surveyed by the polling institute Innofact stated they had never heard of Wero. An additional 23% found the name familiar but could not specify what Wero is. The remaining 7% offered various incorrect definitions, ranging from a currency trading app to a wooden debit card.

Wero is being driven forward by the European Payments Initiative (EPI), a consortium of banks and payment service providers aiming to create a unified European payment solution. Launched in July 2024, Wero initially focused on peer-to-peer mobile money transfers, similar to PayPal. It has since expanded to allow payments with numerous online retailers, competing with services like credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Klarna.

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Almost a third (31 percent) of the 1,002 respondents... have never heard of Wero.

However, skepticism about Wero's potential remains high. A majority of nearly 58% in the Verivox survey doubt that Wero will succeed in becoming Europe's most popular payment service. Oliver Maier, managing director of Verivox Finanzvergleich GmbH, stated that the payment service will only offer real added value when consumers can use it "almost everywhere and preferably both online and offline at the checkout counter, as a matter of course."

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Real added value is only offered by the payment service if consumers can pay with Wero almost everywhere and preferably both online and offline at the checkout counter, as a matter of course.

EPI currently reports 57 million registered Wero users across Belgium, France, and Germany, with 9 million registered in Germany. In comparison, PayPal alone claims 35 million active customer accounts in Germany. Wero is expanding to other European countries, with transitions underway in the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and Austria planned for 2027. Despite these efforts, even among those who know what Wero is, a significant majority (64.8%) have not yet tried the service.

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In comparison: PayPal alone has 35 million active customer accounts in Germany.