Ep. 133 - From iDEAL to Wero: Building Interoperable Payments Across Europe

Justin Hanna (0:05)

Welcome to The Payments Shed Live here in Lisbon at Fintech Meetup Europe. Today, I'm joined by Daniel van Delft, CEO of EPI and iDEAL with Wero. Daniel, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. Tell us a little bit more about yourself and how you got into the world of payments. Great to be here and thanks for having me.

I'm indeed the CEO currently of the beautiful iDEAL Scheme, which is transitioning into the Wero, the European Scheme, and I think we'll be discussing that more later. I have a past of 25 plus years in payments, starting off at the early days in credit cards, moving on to the bank side and then to Visa. So I've spent a lot of years already in payments and I've seen all sides of the business and it's still even increasingly exciting to be part of it. Amazing. Tell us a little bit more about what is where we're actually trying to solve for European payments. Yeah, what we do try to solve, I think what we solve, and we don't try, we're gonna make it happen, is that we really build a European Scheme, an omni-channel European Scheme, which is able to fulfill all the needs of the consumer, the European consumer and the European merchant. And that is really from end to end, meaning that we really have a solid and European-based infrastructure, also able to adapt to the needs of the European consumer and European merchant. And you mentioned a lot of your background in the card world. How do you feel that Wero competes with the global card schemes and the big tech wallets? That's of course a question I often get as my past is also at Visa. I think first and foremost as it is building on account-to-account infrastructure, specifically SEPA's account-to-account infrastructure, so that actually already cuts one layer in the payments, meaning it's more efficient. We are able to compete with the likes of Visa and Mastercard because we are able to really tune in on the specific needs of the European consumer and the European merchant. And I think lastly and that is only from the last years is really now building up in terms of momentum is the sovereignty piece. That there is really an building need for European sovereignty also in payments and specifically in payments is what we have seen in a number of countries that their reliance on international card schemes is often a bit too big. Although of course we welcome and appreciate competition and competition should stay. Now when we think about iDEAL and how successful it has been in the Netherlands, how do you take that trust of that brand as you move into Wero across the rest of Europe? Yeah, that actually was a really important step for us and we did that through co-branding. So iDEAL is, and not many of you in Europe know iDEAL, but we know iDEAL very well in the Dutch market with 70% market share.

So every single consumer knows and how to pay with iDEAL. And we simply co-branded all the iDEAL merchant sites with iDEAL Wero, and also on the consumer side. So for a consumer, it came apparent that iDEAL is similar to Wero, is actually transitioning into Wero. And we saw that the recognition of the brand grew very rapidly in the Dutch market, specifically if you also compare to other markets. What do merchants go out of switching?

Merchants in general, because I think it's better to answer this question from a European perspective. They get European acceptance out of it, meaning, again, an efficient solution to a lot of merchants. If you look at, for example, the current merchant base who accepts iDEAL, it's also far broader than only the Dutch environment. So we have 450,000 merchants active on the iDEAL side, and really a substantial number of them already operates outside of the Netherlands. So that's one thing. Secondly is that it provides a competitive solution towards the other payment options, and it is going to be evolutionary, of course, into an omni-sales solution. We really fit to the needs of the merchant. So that's actually what the merchant gets from us. And we talk about consumers, we've talked about the merchants. Now what about the acquiring banks? The acquiring banks. So acquiring banks and non-banks, because I think if you look at the current landscape, and I just saw the figures once more, and they're striking in the sense that in the iDEAL scheme we have 85 acquiring partners, and 16 issuing partners. Just to give some perspective. So from an acquiring perspective, so both the acquiring bank as well as the acquiring non-bank partners, do get again additional options. So actually it's why iDEAL was so successful is actually what you can now transition and actually copy into other markets, and building on a very efficient layer, and a cost-effective layer for the acquiring partner as well. So they are really able to offer a broader, richer solution towards their merchants, and really compare to iDEAL and richer solution, meaning that we are able to support subscriptions, we are able to support event-dependent payment plans, and other plans to come. So that is one thing. And of course, we also now will move into the point of sale with Wero, which on the iDEAL side, they currently can't offer because it simply isn't there, only through QR codes. And what market do you think will be the toughest market to try and crack with this?