ACCEPTANCE & PROCESSING

Mastercard has introduced offline payment requirements across Europe, so that cards and terminals can keep transacting during power or outages. From February 2027 all newly issued Mastercard cards in Europe must support offline payments, and from May 2027 all new and replacement terminals must do the same. Spending limits are stored on the card chip, the terminal approves the transaction locally, and it is submitted for clearing once the connection returns. Mastercard has already deployed the capability in Denmark, Sweden, Estonia and Latvia. Sweden and Switzerland have separately agreed national offline card arrangements with their authorities. For acquirers and terminal vendors, the terminal requirement turns resilience into a certification and estate-replacement cost, and it narrows one of the functional advantages claimed for an offline-capable digital euro.

Getnet has opened its merchant payments platform to more than 30 European countries, giving multinational merchants, marketplaces and e-commerce firms access through a single integration. The service runs on Getnet Single Entry Point, the connection layer the Santander-owned acquirer first used in Latin America, and includes local methods such as Bizum in Spain and MB WAY in Portugal, where Getnet is a direct member. Beyond acceptance, merchants and payment service providers can collect funds, reconcile balances, convert currencies and make payouts, initially in 20 currencies and to 140 countries. Until now Getnet’s European business has centred on Spain and Portugal. The move adds a bank-owned acquirer to the cross-border enterprise segment where Adyen, Stripe and Checkout.com already compete, and where differentiation rests on local payment method coverage and treasury functions rather than card pricing alone.

The European Payments Initiative (EPI) has joined nexo standards, the body that maintains open, ISO 20022-based protocols linking tills, payment terminals, acquirers and terminal management systems. Membership is intended to get Wero supported across existing acceptance infrastructure as EPI prepares an in-store rollout across markets in 2027. Building Wero into a shared terminal standard, rather than relying on proprietary integrations, lowers the cost for acquirers and terminal vendors of adding it at the point of sale, where card schemes have shaped merchant estates for decades.

DIGITAL WALLETS

mBank has launched BLIK Recurring Payments in its mobile app, becoming the ninth Polish bank to support the subscription service developed by BLIK operator Polski Standard Płatności. Consumers select the method at a merchant’s checkout, enter a BLIK code and approve the mandate in their banking app, after which charges are taken automatically or confirmed one by one, depending on the merchant’s terms. Consent can be withdrawn in the app at any time, and no card details are stored. Bank-app mandates for repeat billing compete directly with card-on-file, the segment of e-commerce where account-to-account schemes have so far made least progress against cards.

Vipps MobilePay will rename MobilePay as Vipps in Denmark, Finland and Greenland from January 2027, completing the integration that followed the 2022 merger of the two wallets. Since 6 October the MobilePay app in Denmark and Finland has shown the Vipps icon while keeping its blue colour, and its features are unchanged. A single Nordic brand simplifies acceptance marks at merchants and presents one counterparty as national wallets connect to Wero and to each other through the new hub.

AGENTIC & eCOMMERCE

Payrails has launched a merchant of record service that lets AI, SaaS, app and digital goods companies use merchant of record coverage in some markets and their own direct acquiring in others on one platform. In each market assigned to the service, Payrails becomes the legal seller, calculating and remitting sales tax, VAT and GST and handling invoicing, compliance, fraud prevention and disputes. A company can later move a market to its own merchant IDs without re-integrating, because saved cards are held in the Payrails Token Vault rather than by a single provider, so subscribers need not re-enter card details. Removing card-data lock-in turns merchant of record from a long-term dependency into an entry ramp to direct acquiring, which squeezes providers whose margins rely on merchants staying put.

LITIGATION

A proposed €800m opt-out collective action has been filed against Visa and Mastercard at the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal on behalf of about 126,000 UK businesses that accepted online payments from cards issued in the European Economic Area (EEA). The claim covers transactions since October 2020. It concerns interchange on UK to EEA card-not-present payments, which the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) found rose from 0.2% to 1.15% for consumer debit and from 0.3% to 1.5% for consumer credit after increases by Visa in October 2021 and Mastercard in April 2022. The claim builds on an earlier tribunal finding that these fees were unlawful and on the PSR’s proposed cap, which is not yet in force. Damages exposure alongside a pending cap raises the cost to the schemes of keeping cross-border rates above the pre-Brexit EU caps.

OPEN BANKING & PSD

Mollie has launched Pay by Bank in the Netherlands, the first product built on the open banking connectivity of GoCardless, acquired earlier in 2026. The product combines GoCardless’s direct connections to more than 2,500 banks with Mollie’s checkout and supports one-off payments, recurring payments and invoicing on one foundation. Mollie says owning the bank connection cuts a payment to three steps, against five in other open banking flows. It also captures the payer’s IBAN at checkout, so a first payment can lead to a Direct Debit mandate. It carries no consumer-facing brand, and expansion to the rest of Europe is planned through 2027. A payment service provider that owns both the checkout and the bank connections can compete on conversion and on recurring billing together, the two areas where pay by bank has lagged cards and Direct Debit.