Europe has spent years talking about digital sovereignty. At checkout, that argument is finally turning into a product.
dm is adding Wero to its German online store, making it one of the first large retailers to put the European Payments Initiative’s payment system into a mainstream e-commerce checkout. Wero is built around instant account-to-account payments and is intended to become a European alternative to established card and wallet infrastructure.
For shoppers, the technical change is not especially dramatic. They get another way to pay.
Strategically, it is much more interesting.
Control of checkout is not only about transaction fees. Payment data, identity, fraud prevention, loyalty and the retailer’s relationship with banks or wallet providers increasingly sit on the same infrastructure. European merchants remain heavily dependent on international card networks and technology platforms for that layer.
Wero is an attempt to reduce that dependency with a pan-European payment rail. According to dm, Wero is already available for person-to-person payments in Germany, France and Belgium and is used by around 58 million people. Since the end of 2025, the service has been expanding into German e-commerce.
That makes dm’s early adoption more important than the number of shoppers who choose Wero on day one. Large retailers provide volume, visibility and real checkout behavior. Without them, new payment infrastructure remains a banking project.
The harder test begins now.
Consumers do not switch payment methods out of geopolitical loyalty. Wero has to be at least as easy, reliable and familiar as the options already on their phones and in their browsers. Retailers will be watching conversion, abandonment and cost, not the political case for European autonomy.
Europe’s payments independence will not be decided at a policy conference.
It will be decided in the cart. dm is one of the first places where we will see whether a political ambition can become a payment habit.