46.2 – What’s next?
Three digits, a comma… nothing more ordinary at first glance. Yet, it has shaped decades of payments in our everyday life. These digits embody the ISO/IEC 7810 standard, the international norm that enforced the size of a credit card with a surface area of exactly 46.2 cm². For years, Europe embraced this format without questions, weaving into our daily life a structural dependence on non-European networks; networks that have since become the invisible highways of global commerce. The gesture is simple, almost mundane: pull out a card, enter a code, confirm a purchase. But will this everyday ritual soon become a relic of the past?
During all that time, the Old Continent has not stood still. For years, numerous initiatives have emerged to strengthen the European payments ecosystem, developed in successive layers: the common market, the monetary union, the euro, the harmonization of transfers through SEPA, and subsequent European directives such as PSD2…
It is also within this continuity of innovation that Wero emerges today. Wero is a private venture launched by EPI Company (European Payments Initiative), which is quickly gaining traction across Europe’s payment ecosystem. The ambition behind Wero goes beyond more convenience; it represents a quiet revolution. By creating a payment solution tailored to Europe’s diverse needs, it challenges the status quo and redefines what it means to transact in a united yet multifaceted Europe. The success of this initiative could well signal the beginning of the end for an era dominated by external standards, replacing it with a system that is inherently European, designed by Europeans, for Europeans.
In this context, Luxembourg occupies a unique position and stands as a model market. To gain greater traction and achieve broad deployment, EPI will roll out in the country this year. Situated at the heart of Europe, Luxembourg offers an ideal launch environment, robust, diverse, and highly representative of broader European usage patterns. With its multi‑banked population, multicultural community, and large base of cross‑border workers, Luxembourg provides the perfect conditions to showcase and fully implement the Wero concept, accelerating its adoption across Europe.
To support their integration with this innovative solution in the region, several Luxembourgish banks will rely on LUXHUB, a key technological integrator for Open Banking and PSD2 compliance. Five institutions among which Spuerkeess, Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (BIL), POST Luxembourg, Banque Raiffeisen and BGL BNP Paribas have joined the initiative and will progressively offer Wero to their clients from mid‑2026. LUXHUB is acting as a technical integrator between local banks, the EPI platform and the digital payments ecosystem to ensure system interoperability, compliance with the EPI Rulebook and the security of data flows. It reduces the implementation complexity for institutions, while ensuring alignment with current technical requirements.