Decathlon didn’t just add a new payment button to its German checkout page. It handed European banks their first big-box sporting goods test case at a moment when competition in digital payments is intensifying and the push for EU-made payment infrastructure is growing.
Decathlon switched on Wero on decathlon.de on July 20, making Germany the first market in the French group’s international footprint to carry the European payment scheme.
Wero is the retail payment product of the European Payments Initiative (EPI), a consortium of banks and payment providers backed by 18 shareholder institutions and more than 50 members across the region. It routes payments directly between bank accounts in real time, authorized in the customer’s banking app via fingerprint or face recognition, so the merchant never receives a card number.
Archive reporting shows the scale Wero is still building toward: 43 million active users across the region in August 2025, 46 million by November 2025 alongside the retail launch, and around 56 million by the time of the Decathlon rollout in July 2026, with German registrations rising from 1.3 million to 1.8 million over the same period.
Decathlon joins a merchant roster that already includes Eventim Live, with Lidl, Rossmann and Hornbach expected to follow.
The insider why
For Decathlon, the incentive is not just optics. Patrick Müller, chief digital and chief marketing officer at Decathlon Germany, tied the launch to the retailer’s membership program, saying the connection delivers “a genuine added value” on every purchase. That frames Wero as a loyalty and retention tool, not only a checkout option. Industry estimates commonly place card network processing costs at around 1 to 2 percent of transaction value in fees to Visa and Mastercard. An account to account rail that bypasses that layer can be a direct margin lever for a retailer operating at scale on thin sporting goods margins.
The rollout plan extends beyond the website.
Decathlon says it is preparing the technical integration needed to bring Wero to its roughly 110 physical stores in Germany, with the goal of a consistent payment experience across online and offline channels. A joint activation campaign with EPI is scheduled for October: a six week promotion offering a €10 voucher to customers who pay with Wero on decathlon.de, funded entirely by EPI rather than Decathlon.
The challenge and the promise
EPI’s willingness to fund customer incentives points to the network’s core problem. Payment schemes live or die on how many merchants and consumers show up at the same time, and Wero still lacks in store point of sale functionality. That capability is not expected until 2026 and 2027. Joachim Schmalzl, EPI’s supervisory board chairman, has acknowledged the initiative still faces real hurdles even as he called the ecommerce launch a milestone toward “a sovereign European payment system.”
Decathlon being among the first to implement the system can help test Wero’s promise: lower processing costs, tighter loyalty integration and one less transaction fee flowing to a US based network, provided Wero can close the gap between its ambitions and its still limited in store reach.
