Payments in Europe

A payment institution licensed in any EU member state can passport that license and offer payment services across the rest of the union, under the second Payment Services Directive. In Germany, that license comes from BaFin under the Zahlungsdiensteaufsichtsgesetz; a firm licensed in France or the Netherlands answers to its own national supervisor but sells the same product into Germany without a second license. This single-license principle is why a Berlin or Amsterdam-based payment startup can serve customers across the euro area from day one, as long as its home supervisor keeps approving it.

The EU is replacing the second Payment Services Directive with a new Payment Services Directive (PSD3) and, for the first time, a directly applicable Payment Services Regulation (PSR) that needs no national transposition law. Negotiators reached provisional agreement on the package in late 2025, and the law firm Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer expects the rules to apply from mid to late 2027. The package adds an IBAN name check before a transfer is confirmed, a clearer split of liability between banks and payment providers for authorized push payment fraud, and stricter rules on how customer funds are safeguarded. The PSR is a regulation, not a directive, so it applies the same way in every member state at once, without the gaps that different national transpositions of PSD2 created.

Wero, the wallet of the bank-owned European Payments Initiative (EPI), launched for transfers between individuals in Belgium, France and Germany and has grown past 43 million registered users. Luxembourg is set to add Wero, and the Netherlands is migrating from its national iDEAL scheme to Wero, with Worldline covering the planned online-payment rollout for merchants in Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. EPI built Wero as a European answer to Visa, Mastercard and PayPal at checkout, backed by the same instant-transfer rails every bank in the EU must now offer under the EU's instant payments rule.

Under Regulation (EU) 2024/886, every payment service provider in the euro area that offers SEPA credit transfers must also offer an instant version, credited to the payee within ten seconds at any hour, and it must charge no more for the instant transfer than for a standard one. The rule has turned instant payments from a paid extra into the default way many Europeans send money, and it is the rail both Wero and euro stablecoins compete against for the same use case: fast, low-cost transfers that settle around the clock. See instant payments in Europe for how banks and providers built this out.

Finance Loop is the meeting place for people who build and supervise payments across Europe: banks, payment institutions and the fintechs around them. It connects the finance, IT and AI communities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, with events in Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin and Hamburg.

Finance Loop is a strategic partner of the Digital Euro Association, the Frankfurt think tank behind the Digital Euro Conference, where speakers from central banks, commercial banks and fintechs across Europe cover the digital euro and stablecoins. Finance Loop supported the Bybit EU x Circle Roadshow in Frankfurt, with panels on stablecoins, USDC and EURC. Finance Loop is media partner of Capital & Code in Frankfurt, a conference on stablecoins, cross-border payments and treasury, and it supports When Banks Say 'No', a Frankfurt seminar on payments under sanctions and de-risking. With Venturebloxx it prepares the report The Future of Money in Europe, and during Sibos in Frankfurt it held a side event on payments and blockchain. Related pages: payments in Germany, instant payments in Europe and stablecoins in Europe.

No. Under the EU's passporting rules, a payment institution licensed by one national supervisor, such as BaFin in Germany, can offer its services in every other EU member state without a separate license there. It still has to notify the host supervisor and follow local conduct rules.

The European Payments Initiative is a company owned by a group of major European banks and payment processors that built Wero, a wallet for instant transfers and, from 2026, online checkout. It aims to give European merchants and consumers a payment option that does not depend on Visa, Mastercard or PayPal, and it now has more than 43 million registered users in Belgium, France and Germany, with the Netherlands and Luxembourg joining next.

The package reached provisional political agreement between the European Parliament and the Council in late 2025. Law firms following the file expect the rules to take effect from mid to late 2027, though BaFin has already signaled it expects new German license applications to build toward the new requirements ahead of that date.