How Europe Pays With a Link: Open Banking in Practice

The Dutch have Tikkie. The Spanish have Bizum. Scandinavians have Swish and Vipps. Germans, French and Belgians are migrating to Wero. And the Irish launched Zippay in March 2026. All of these apps do the same thing: you send a link or a phone number, someone clicks, and money lands in your account. No card, no cash, no dictating a 26-digit IBAN. This is not the future. This is the present.

Tikkie (Netherlands): 170 million payment requests sent in 2025, 8.5 billion euros in turnover. 10 million users in a country of 17 million. 89% of payments settled within the day, 38% within five minutes. Record: almost 700,000 transactions in a single day on King's Day 2025. Dutch people even send Tikkies for using the bathroom. Bizum (Spain): 30 million users, over 60% of the population. 1.15 billion P2P transactions in 2025. Half of all bank transfers in Spain go through Bizum. 90% of the instant payments market in the country. Swish (Sweden): 8 million users in a country of 10 million. Used so widely that the verb "to swish" has entered the Swedish language. Vipps MobilePay (Norway, Denmark, Finland): over 11 million users combined. Since 2024, it supports cross-border transfers between Nordic countries. In Norway, Vipps has 4.2 million users among 5.5 million inhabitants. BLIK (Poland): almost 3 billion transactions in 2025, 20.7 million active users, 735 million phone-number transfers. BLIK is a European-scale phenomenon, although it operates in a different model than the above - not as link-to-pay, but as a system of codes and mobile transfers.

Each of these apps was built on the foundation of Open Banking and the PSD2 regulation, which since 2018 requires European banks to expose APIs for payment initiation (PIS) and account information access (AIS). The pattern is the same: the payment happens directly from account to account through banking infrastructure. The app does not touch the money - it is only an experience layer that turns a bank transfer into something as simple as sending a message. The "request to pay" model is key here: you create a payment request, send a link, the recipient clicks and pays from their bank. No app download, no registration, no data entry. The recipient of the link does not need to be a user of any system. The technology foundation is identical: Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) in the bank, instant transfers, full identification of both parties. This is not a bypass of the banking system - it is its intelligent reuse.

The most interesting story is Wero. The European Payments Initiative (EPI) launched Wero in July 2024. Within 12 months it gained 43 million users in Germany, France and Belgium. In Germany it replaced Giropay. In France, Paylib. In Belgium, Payconiq. In 2026, Luxembourg and the Netherlands are joining (iDEAL migration to Wero). In February 2026, EPI signed an agreement with the EuroPA alliance, which includes Bizum (Spain), Bancomat Pay (Italy), MB WAY (Portugal) and Vipps MobilePay (Scandinavia). The goal: a unified P2P payment network across 15 European countries, covering 382 million people. By 2027.

What is interesting is that all of these systems are evolving in the same direction: they start with peer-to-peer payments, and then expand into e-commerce and point-of-sale payments. Tikkie launched Tikkie Zakelijk (the business version), whose transaction count grew 25% year over year. Bizum launched Bizum Pay in 2025, supporting NFC and online payments. Wero is planning point-of-sale (POS) rollout in 2026. Amazon UK launched "pay by bank", and eBay partnered with TrueLayer. The pattern is the same across Europe: request-to-pay as the entry point, then expansion into commerce.

Three things are converging. First, regulation. PSD2 has been in force for years, but now PSD3 and the Payment Services Regulation are arriving, opening the market even further. Instant payments are becoming mandatory in the EU. Second, infrastructure. European banks have increasingly mature Open Banking APIs. Technology providers (AISP/PISP) have already connected banks in most EU countries. The technology is ready. Third, cost. Account-to-account (A2A) is cheaper than cards because it bypasses interchange and chargebacks. For merchants, that is a real saving. That is why Amazon, eBay and others are entering this model.

Tikkie has existed since 2016. Bizum since 2016. Swish since 2012. Wero is consolidating them into a single pan-European network. The link-to-pay model built on Open Banking is becoming the standard of payments in Europe. Markets that do not yet have it will have it. It is a matter of time, not a question.