Decathlon Germany goes live with Wero, testing Europe's bank-backed payment push

On July 20, Decathlon switched on Wero at checkout on decathlon.de, making Germany the first country in the retailer’s international network to support the European Payments Initiative’s scheme. Wero is backed by a consortium of 18 shareholder banks and 50-plus members, and moves money directly between bank accounts in real time. Customers authorize each payment in their banking app with a fingerprint or face scan, so the merchant never handles a card number. The network claims roughly 56 million active users at the time of the rollout, up from 43 million a year earlier, with German registrations climbing to about 1.8 million.

Decathlon’s motive goes beyond appearances. Executives frame Wero as a loyalty play tied to the retailer’s membership program, but the sharper incentive is cost: account-to-account rails skip the 1-2 percent that Visa and Mastercard typically take per transaction, a meaningful margin lever in the thin-margin sporting goods business. The retailer plans to extend Wero to its roughly 110 German stores for a unified online-and-offline experience, and an October promotion — a €10 voucher for paying with Wero, funded entirely by EPI — is designed to pull shoppers onto the new rail.

That EPI, not Decathlon, is paying for the incentives exposes the network’s core weakness. Payment schemes need merchants and consumers to arrive at the same time, and Wero still can’t handle in-store point-of-sale, a gap not expected to close until 2026-2027. EPI leadership concedes real hurdles remain even as it bills the ecommerce launch a milestone toward a ‘sovereign European payment system.’ Decathlon’s early adoption becomes a test of whether Wero can convert its political and cost-saving promise — one fewer fee flowing to a US network — into scale before its limited reach undercuts the pitch.