Europe wants to connect Bizum, Bancomat, Wero, MB WAY and Vipps MobilePay through a common infrastructure, but the real challenge facing the European Network for Payments (ENP) begins after the announcement. The new entity, headquartered in Madrid, will have to make interoperable payment systems that were born with different architectures, participating banks, operating rules and user experiences. The first phase focuses on cross-border person-to-person payments, and the project is expected to later extend to e-commerce and in-store payments.
The technical keys to ENP and European payments in 20 seconds
- ENP will work as a common layer connecting existing European payment networks.
- Payments will rely on instant account-to-account transfers, not on creating a new card network.
- The first major challenge will be translating identities, messages, statuses and rules between different systems.
- The more complex scenarios will come later: e-commerce, QR codes, terminals, refunds and fraud.
- Bizum has already demonstrated international interoperability with Bancomat and MB WAY, an experience that serves as a foundation for ENP.
The difference between announcing interoperability and actually achieving it at a European scale is enormous. In a payments system, it isn’t enough for two applications to be able to exchange a transfer order. You have to guarantee that the transaction reaches the right bank, that the recipient is correctly identified, that the payment status is consistent across all systems, that errors are handled the same way, and that the money arrives within the agreed timeframes.
ENP isn’t starting from scratch. Bizum, Bancomat and MB WAY have already rolled out cross-border interoperability between Spain, Italy, Portugal and Andorra. In that model, a user can select a contact and send money using their usual solution, while the participating systems resolve the connection between the different networks. Bizum, Bancomat and MB WAY began this rollout gradually, and their infrastructure already connects more than 50 million users and 186 financial institutions across those four territories.
The new ENP aims to take that approach to a larger scale, also incorporating Wero and Vipps MobilePay and creating an entity responsible for operating the common interoperability hub.
The first problem is getting five systems to speak the same language
From a technical standpoint, ENP looks less like building a new application and more like creating a translation and coordination layer between existing financial systems.
Each network may have its own message formats, identifiers, APIs, authentication mechanisms, error codes, operating limits and incident-resolution procedures.
A seemingly simple payment contains far more information than just an amount and a phone number. The system has to know who is initiating the operation, who is receiving the money, which bank is involved, which entity is responsible for each end, what the status of the transaction is, and what happens if one of the participants doesn’t respond.
ENP will have to provide a common model for that information.
One possible architecture can be visualized like this:
Bizum → ENP hub → destination European system → receiving bank
But the hub can’t simply forward messages. It needs to translate between each participant’s data models and maintain the state of a transaction as it moves across different infrastructures.
The problem is especially visible when a transaction fails midway through the process. For example, if the recipient’s bank confirms a transaction but the intermediate system doesn’t correctly receive that confirmation, ENP needs to determine whether the payment is completed, pending or rejected. Automatically retrying an order without idempotency mechanisms could result in a duplicate payment.
These kinds of situations are common in distributed systems, but in instant payments they have direct financial consequences.
A phone number as an identifier looks simple until it crosses borders
Bizum has built much of its user experience around the mobile phone number. For users, selecting a contact is far simpler than entering an IBAN.
But that simplicity requires an identity-resolution infrastructure behind the scenes.
When a Spanish user sends money to a foreign number, the system has to determine which European solution manages that number, which bank it’s associated with, and which account identifier should be used for the transfer.
In addition, phone numbers can change carriers, can be reused, and different countries use different formats. There are also users who may have more than one banking relationship.
ENP will have to maintain reliable alias resolution mechanisms — that is, a way to translate between a simple identifier, such as a phone number, and the actual bank account that will receive the money.
Wero already describes a model based on instant account-to-account payments and allows transactions without entering an IBAN directly. Its infrastructure uses SEPA Instant payments and QR codes in certain scenarios.
The challenge for ENP will be making that resolution work the same way when the source is Bizum, the destination is Bancomat, and the transaction passes through different banks.
SEPA Instant solves part of the problem, not all of it
Europe’s advantage is that it already has a common infrastructure for instant transfers: SEPA Instant, within the single euro payments area.
That means ENP doesn’t have to invent the basic transport of money from scratch. But a consumer payments network needs much more than moving euros between two accounts.
The entire experience needs to be coordinated: identification, authorization, confirmation, limits, notifications, fraud prevention, error handling, reconciliation and after-the-fact support.
That’s why ENP is designed as an interoperability layer on top of existing systems, not as a direct replacement for the banking system.
The project itself states that it will use a common technical and operational layer based on European standards, including instant account-to-account payments.
This also reduces one of the project’s risks: there’s no need to migrate every Bizum, Wero or Bancomat user to a new platform. Each solution keeps its brand and user experience while the hub connects the networks behind the scenes.
QR, NFC and in-store payments: this is where the real problem begins
The jump from P2P to e-commerce and physical payments will be considerably more complicated.
In April 2026, Bancomat, EPI and SIBS-MB WAY already ran a proof of concept for cross-border in-store payments using QR codes. Users were able to pay at merchants belonging to the other participating systems.
It’s an important demonstration, but a proof of concept is not the same as a network deployed across millions of merchants.
New components come into play in a store: point-of-sale (POS) terminals, acquirers, payment service providers, QR codes, banking apps, confirmations, reconciliation and anti-fraud systems.
On top of that, Europe has a technological problem that doesn’t disappear just because ENP is created: there are different ways to initiate an in-person payment.
A merchant may use a static QR code, a dynamic QR code, NFC, a banking app, or a combination of these mechanisms. ENP will have to decide which standards it supports and how it enables a Bizum user to pay at a merchant that works with a different infrastructure.
Merchants don’t want five different integrations either. That’s precisely why interoperability only has value if it reduces complexity on the merchant side.
Fraud will be one of the biggest challenges
A pan-European instant payments system also expands the surface that anti-fraud systems need to monitor.
Fraud in a P2P payment doesn’t necessarily behave the same way as fraud in an online purchase. Nor are the signals available to a Spanish bank the same as those available to an Italian one.
ENP will need to coordinate enough information to detect suspicious patterns without turning the hub into a giant central repository of personal data.
That balance is delicate.
The system must share the information needed to execute and protect a transaction, while complying with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), national rules and anti-money-laundering obligations.
There’s also an operational question: who decides that a transaction is suspicious?
If Bizum authorizes a transaction but the receiving bank blocks it, the final status has to be consistent. The user has to get an understandable response even when several platforms are involved behind the scenes.
Card payment systems have decades of rules and procedures for resolving disputes. ENP will have to define many of those processes for a new European architecture.
Availability can’t depend on the country
Another less visible challenge is availability.
A national service can be designed around a relatively limited set of banks and providers. ENP aims to connect networks operating across 13 countries and around 130 million users.
That requires thinking in terms of a distributed, fault-tolerant architecture.
The hub can’t become a single point of failure for the whole of Europe. If an ENP outage prevents millions of people from paying each other, the infrastructure would have a centralized dependency that’s hard to reconcile with the goal of sovereignty. That ambition sits alongside Brussels’ other flagship payments project, the digital euro, which raises its own infrastructure and privacy questions.
The architecture will have to include geographic redundancy, disaster recovery, continuous monitoring, certificate and key management, credential rotation and continuity mechanisms.
And there’s an additional problem: ENP will depend on systems outside its direct control.
If a participating bank, a clearing house, an identity provider or a national network fails, the hub needs to be able to distinguish between a pending transaction and a failed one. That coordination will be essential to avoid incorrect retries and accounting discrepancies.
Bizum’s experience is probably the most important technical asset
For Spain, Bizum has an advantage that goes beyond its millions of users: it has already been through the process of international interoperability.
The connection with Bancomat and MB WAY has shown that it’s possible to maintain the local user experience while the banking systems work behind the scenes. The next step is turning that experience into an architecture capable of incorporating more networks.
That can reduce ENP’s technical risk, but it also introduces a scaling problem.
Connecting three systems isn’t the same as connecting five, and five isn’t the same as a network open to new participants. Each new member adds rules, certification tests, APIs, error cases, anti-fraud procedures and possible combinations.
That’s why the hub’s design will be decisive. ENP needs to avoid an architecture based on specific connections between each pair of systems. If every network had to build an individual integration with all the others, complexity would grow quickly.
A common hub with well-defined interfaces and standards lets each new participant integrate once and then communicate with everyone else through the common layer.
That’s probably ENP’s real technical value.
The real test will come with e-commerce
Person-to-person payments are just the first step. The project is expected to move toward online and in-person payments during 2027.
That’s where problems that don’t exist in a simple money transfer between two contacts will appear.
A merchant needs a reliable payment confirmation, automatic reconciliation, refund management, partial returns, recurring payments, authorization and cancellation. An e-commerce platform also needs stable APIs, documentation, test environments and notification mechanisms.
The ecosystem will have to offer developers something similar to what the major networks already offer: a predictable way to integrate payments without having to know every detail of each bank or country.
And that’s the point at which ENP will stop being just a financial interoperability project and become a technology platform.
Europe has already shown it can connect national systems. Bizum, Bancomat and MB WAY are doing it. There’s also a proof of concept for cross-border merchant payments using QR codes.
The challenge now is much bigger: turning those integrations into a pan-European infrastructure with permanent availability, security, anti-fraud protection, APIs, common standards and the capacity to add new countries without multiplying complexity.
If ENP achieves that technical layer, users shouldn’t have to know what happens behind a payment. That invisibility will be one of the best signs that interoperability is working.
Frequently asked questions
What technical problem is ENP trying to solve?
ENP aims to connect European payment systems that currently operate independently through a common technical and operational layer. The goal is for users to be able to pay across countries without having to switch apps or know which network the recipient uses.
Why isn’t SEPA Instant enough on its own?
SEPA Instant provides the infrastructure to transfer euros between accounts instantly, but a payment experience also needs to solve identity, aliases, authorization, fraud prevention, errors, notifications, reconciliation and user experience.
What does Bizum bring to ENP?
Bizum brings a widely adopted payments infrastructure in Spain and previous experience in international interoperability. It already has an operational connection with Bancomat and MB WAY for instant cross-border payments.
What will be ENP’s biggest challenge?
The challenge will be keeping the experience simple while coordinating multiple banks, networks, APIs, standards, anti-fraud systems and payment methods. The hardest jump will come when ENP moves from P2P to large-scale e-commerce and in-person payments.
Will ENP technically replace Visa and Mastercard?
Not directly. ENP is designed as an interoperability layer between European account-to-account payment solutions, while Visa and Mastercard operate international card payment networks.
