In order to live up to its claim as a sovereign payment service, Wero wants to reduce its dependence on non-European cloud providers in the future. This was announced by the European Payment Initiative (EPI), an association of banks and payment service providers from seven European countries that operates Wero.
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Overseas service providers
At the moment, Wero still uses services from providers outside Europe in certain areas, although the EPI left open which areas and which companies these are. However, efforts are being made to “gradually” expand the use of providers based in Europe. What these are and in what period of time this should happen also remained open.
An inquiry from netzpolitik.org revealed last week that Wero also has US services behind the EU paint job. Accordingly, the EPI admitted that Wero partially processes its services via Amazon’s cloud subsidiary AWS. According to the report, EPI uses “a combination of European and international technology providers,” including “managed infrastructure and software services from AWS.” The EPI did not want to give more precise details about which services are used “for security reasons”.
netzpolitik.org criticized that Wero could not guarantee protection from the CLOUD Act by using US services. The 2018 US law requires US-based tech service providers to share data with US authorities under certain conditions, even if it is held outside US territory.
We had nothing back then
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“When EPI first launched Wero, only cloud services from international providers could offer the performance, security and stability required for a competitive solution,” EPI said in a statement. The cloud market has now developed so significantly that the EPI could advance the transition.
Apart from that, “all data from EPI and Wero would be stored in European data centers and encrypted by appropriate security measures and protected from potential access from outside Europe”. The EPI also emphasized that control over Wero lies purely in European hands: it uses the European SEPA infrastructure for real-time payments, follows European system rules and is supported and financed by European institutions.
Slow start in Germany
With Wero, EPI wants to create a counterweight to US payment providers. Wero launched mobile-to-mobile payments in July 2024, and since November 2025 the service can also be used as a payment method in e-commerce. The payment method is available in several European countries such as France, Germany and the Netherlands.
On the banking side in Germany, the savings banks and the Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken are on board, as are Deutsche Bank, Postbank and Commerzbank. On the retail side, Eventim, Lidl, Rossmann and Decathlon, among others, support the payment system. A recent survey by Handelsblatt points to a rather slow introduction in Germany: According to this, of the ten largest online retailers in this country, only Media-Markt-Saturn has so far announced the Wero connection without giving a start date. According to the Handelsblatt, Wero does not yet provide any figures on the volume of payments processed.
(sigh)
