Wero at the card terminal: HiPay joins EPI, starting in France

What happened

The European Payments Initiative (EPI), which owns the Wero payment solution, admitted the French payment service provider HiPay as a principal member on 8 September 2026. HiPay processes local payment methods for merchants across Europe — among those named are Multibanco MB Way in Portugal, Bancomat Pay in Italy, Bancontact in Belgium and Bizum in Spain — and maintains teams in Paris, Brussels, Lisbon, Milan, Madrid and Munich. The sentence that matters for merchants comes further down the announcement: HiPay wants to be among the first to roll out Wero at the point of sale, via existing till systems, card terminals and Tap to Pay. That will happen first in France, where Wero is due to launch in online retail by the end of 2026; in Germany and Belgium, Wero is already available in e-commerce. EPI chief executive Martina Weimert names the goal as payment solutions tailored to the particularities of each market.

Who is affected

Bricks-and-mortar merchants and restaurateurs who will swap terminals or renew contracts over the next two years. Also online merchants in Germany who already have Wero in the checkout or are considering it, and every payment network operator, acquirer and till manufacturer who now has to decide whether to add the payment method to their software.

Assessment

Until now, the sentence “Wero will come to the point of sale in 2026 as well” was a declaration of intent with no sender. Now there is one: a payment service provider that earns money when merchants accept the payment method, and that explicitly names as its route what is already standing in the shops — till systems, card terminals, Tap to Pay on the smartphone. That is the realistic version. A European payment solution does not grow big because consumers love an app, but because it sits inside the payment process the merchant is paying for anyway.

For German merchants, nothing changes today all the same, and that belongs in an honest assessment. France is named, not Germany; there is still no date for the German POS launch, and nobody names conditions in announcements like this anyway. What does change is the question you should ask at your next terminal contract. Anyone signing a contract in 2026 with a 48-month term and a device the provider no longer intends to extend by software is buying into exactly the dead end many merchants already stood in with contactless payment. The lesson is not “wait for Wero”, it is: extensibility is a contract feature, not a marketing promise.

What to do now

1. Ask your payment network operator or acquirer in writing whether and when Wero will be supported at the POS, and whether your own terminal can handle it via a software update or needs a hardware swap.
2. Before any contract renewal, lay the term, the notice period and the device tie-in side by side. A long term plus a non-extensible device is the expensive combination.
3. Online merchants with a German checkout should check what Wero actually delivers in transactions in their own shop. That figure will later be the only solid argument in the price negotiation about the POS.