ACI Worldwide Joins EPI to Bring Wero to Its Payments Platform

ACI Worldwide has joined the European Payments Initiative (EPI) as a principal member and plans to add the Wero digital wallet to its Payments Orchestration Platform.

The integration is intended to enable merchants and financial intermediaries across Europe to offer Wero as a new digital payment method for consumers and businesses.

The announcement brings together ACI’s payment orchestration infrastructure and EPI’s efforts to build a unified European account-to-account payment solution.

What is Wero?

Wero is a pan-European digital wallet developed by the European Payments Initiative. It operates on SEPA instant payment rails and allows users to send and receive money directly from their bank accounts.

The wallet was launched in 2024 and currently supports consumer account-to-account payments in Belgium, France and Germany.

Unlike a traditional card wallet that stores card credentials, Wero is built around direct bank-account payments. Transactions are initiated through participating banks or the Wero application and processed using instant payment infrastructure.

EPI intends to expand Wero beyond person-to-person transfers into a broader payment solution covering:

· E-commerce payments

· Point-of-sale purchases

· Consumer-to-business payments

· Subscription payments

· Additional account-based services

Online Wero payments are already available in Germany and Belgium, while further services and market launches are planned.

ACI Worldwide will add Wero to its orchestration platform

Under the collaboration, ACI Worldwide will integrate Wero into its Payments Orchestration Platform.

Payment orchestration platforms allow merchants and financial institutions to connect and manage multiple payment methods, processors and transaction routes through a more unified infrastructure layer.

Adding Wero could make it easier for ACI clients to offer the wallet without building and maintaining a completely separate integration.

For merchants, this is particularly relevant when expanding across several European markets. The European payment landscape remains fragmented, with consumers using different cards, bank-transfer methods and local wallets depending on the country.

A payment orchestration layer can help merchants manage these payment options within a common technical environment.

Why the partnership matters for European payments

The ACI–EPI collaboration reflects Europe’s wider effort to develop regional instant payment and digital wallet infrastructure.

Many European countries already have established domestic payment methods. However, these systems do not always provide a consistent experience across national borders.

Wero is intended to provide a more unified European alternative that can work across person-to-person, online and in-store payment scenarios.

By joining EPI, ACI can participate more directly in the development and distribution of this payment infrastructure.

For EPI, the partnership expands the number of payment technology providers capable of connecting merchants and financial intermediaries to Wero.

Wero runs on instant account-to-account payment rails

Wero uses SEPA Instant Credit Transfer infrastructure, allowing payments to move directly between bank accounts.

This differs from conventional card payments, where transactions pass through card networks, issuers, acquirers and other intermediaries before settlement is completed.

Account-to-account payments may provide merchants with another way to accept digital payments alongside cards and existing local methods.

However, adding an instant payment option involves more than placing a new button on the checkout page. Merchants and payment providers must also manage:

· Payment initiation and authentication

· Transaction status confirmation

· Refund and dispute processes

· Reconciliation and reporting

· Fraud and account-takeover controls

· Differences between participating banks and markets

The value of the integration will therefore depend on how smoothly Wero can be incorporated into existing merchant payment and operational workflows.

European merchants gain another local payment option

The integration is expected to allow eligible ACI clients to add Wero to their payment mix as the wallet expands.

For merchants, the main benefit is not simply having another checkout logo. It is gaining access to a payment method designed around European bank accounts and local consumer payment behaviour.

This can be relevant for businesses operating across several European markets, particularly where customers are comfortable using bank-based digital payments.

Offering familiar local payment methods can reduce payment friction, but merchants still need to assess the commercial and operational fit of each method.

Key considerations include:

· Customer adoption in each target market

· Bank and merchant coverage

· Checkout conversion

· Refund and customer-support workflows

· Reconciliation complexity

· Fraud and risk controls

· Integration and maintenance costs

Wero’s future value for merchants will depend on how quickly it reaches wider consumer, bank and merchant adoption.

Expansion beyond Belgium, France and Germany

Wero currently supports consumers in Belgium, France and Germany.

EPI plans to expand the service into Luxembourg and the Netherlands, while continuing to explore additional European markets.

This phased rollout reflects the difficulty of creating a cross-border wallet in a region where banking infrastructure, consumer habits and domestic payment systems vary by country.

The partnership with payment infrastructure providers such as ACI may help Wero increase merchant availability as it enters more markets.

It does not mean that Wero is immediately available to every ACI merchant. Availability will still depend on technical integration, product rollout, participating institutions and local market coverage.

Payment orchestration becomes more important

The announcement also highlights the growing role of payment orchestration in multi-market commerce.

Merchants increasingly need to support cards, digital wallets, instant bank payments and other local payment methods at the same time.

Connecting every payment method separately can create duplicated technical work and fragmented payment data.

An orchestration platform can provide a common layer for:

· Payment-method integration

· Transaction routing

· Payment-status management

· Performance monitoring

· Reconciliation

· Risk and operational controls

The addition of Wero gives ACI clients another account-to-account payment option within that structure.

What this means for cross-border merchants

For cross-border merchants, the development is another sign that European payment acceptance is becoming more diversified.

International cards remain important, but merchants may increasingly need to combine them with regional wallets and instant bank-payment methods.

Businesses evaluating Wero should monitor its expansion market by market rather than assuming uniform European adoption.

They should also assess whether their payment infrastructure can manage Wero alongside existing cards, wallets and domestic payment methods without creating separate operational silos.

The ACI and EPI partnership does not remove Europe’s payment fragmentation immediately. It does, however, broaden the infrastructure available to distribute a pan-European wallet and account-to-account payment method.