Paying with iDEAL, it sounds so familiar, but it will disappear soon. The online payment service was taken over in 2023 European Payments Initiative (EPI) and served as the basis for their new payment service: Wero.
iDEAL is an online payment system developed in and for the Netherlands. About 3.5 million iDEAL payments are made every day and soon this will no longer be the case. The European partnership of banks will create a European payment system.
Takeover iDEAL
iDEAL was developed in 2005 and managed by ING, ABN-AMRO and Rabobank until the end of 2023. In October of that year, iDEAL and the Luxembourg Payconiq were acquired by the European Payments Initiative (EPI), a European partnership of banks of which ING, ABN-AMRO and Rabobank are affiliated and shareholders. The acquisition will cause major changes in the payment landscape.
EPI has developed a European online payment system based on iDEAL. The new system is called Wero and will be the first to be introduced in Belgium, France and Germany in mid-2024. The payment system will then appear in the Netherlands, after which other European countries can also use this online payment platform.
Wero for online payments
Wero can be compared to iDEAL and ensures that you can easily make online payments. Still, it offers some advantages such as broader support. This makes it easier to make purchases in European web shops and pay with the same payment system. iDEAL is only available in the Netherlands, while Wero can soon be used in many more European countries.
You can also create a Wero account online to which you can link your payment account, send private payment requests (similar to Tikkie) and easily save delivery addresses. In the future, it should also be possible for consumers to pay later or in parts.
When will iDEAL disappear?
iDEAL will not disappear in the Netherlands anytime soon, but according to Currence CEO Daniel van Delft it will to the AD you can already discover some transformation from April 2024.
With the new iDEAL you can pay in three installments without interest, provided the webshop allows this. With the option iDEAL in3 it is possible to pay for your purchase in three equal installments: the first immediately upon purchase, the second no later than 30 days later and the third no later than 60 days later. A credit check is carried out in advance to check whether you can actually pay for the purchase.
Later this month you can also create an iDEAL profile for delivery addresses. A feature that, together with paying in installments, is also being added to Wero. The expectation is that all iDEAL profiles will soon be converted to Wero.
It will probably take until early 2026 before the Wero system is introduced in the Netherlands and iDEAL disappears completely. The original idea was to introduce the system in the Netherlands in 2025.