Europe’s payment infrastructure is converging, but its consumers are not. New research finds that shoppers mix habit with choice, local trust with global convenience and enthusiasm for new payment methods with caution over AI. For telemedia businesses, the message is clear: conversion increasingly depends on offering the right rail for the person, purchase and market.
Europe has spent decades trying to make money move as easily across borders as people and goods. The Single Market, SEPA, Open Banking and now instant euro payments have steadily drawn the continent’s payment infrastructure closer together. The rails are becoming faster, more interoperable and more European.
European consumers, however, have declined to become standardised.
That is the central finding of Nuvei’s new How Europe Pays research, conducted with Sapio Research among 5,000 consumers in the UK, Germany, Italy, Poland and Benelux. While infrastructure is converging, the way people choose, assess and trust payment methods remains markedly local – and getting it wrong is costing businesses sales.
| Access the full report here and sign up to attend World Telemedia Marbella where payments and payment orchestration takes centre stage – get your pass here |
It is tempting to summarise the results by saying that consumers are creatures of habit. Sixty-seven per cent tend to use the same way to pay for most purchases. Yet that is only half the story. More than one in four – 27% – actively choose how to pay according to what works best for the particular purchase in front of them.
Those findings are not contradictory. They reveal something more useful: consumers have a repertoire of trusted payment methods rather than one universal favourite. A card may suit one transaction, a wallet another, an account-to-account transfer a third and buy now, pay later a fourth. The preferred choice can change with the value of the purchase, the device being used, the consumer’s cash flow, the merchant, the country and the perceived risk.
In other words, the same shopper may be habitual and selective at the same time. They tend to draw from the same familiar set, but decide which tool within it best fits the moment.
That matters because consumers increasingly place the burden of accommodation on the business. Some 26% expect websites to provide the way they prefer to pay, while 27% say they are likely to abandon a purchase if their preferred method is unavailable. A missing payment option is no longer just a minor checkout inconvenience. For more than one in four consumers, it can be a sale-ending fault.
Payment choice is now part of the product
The commercial lesson is that accepting payments and creating an effective payment experience are no longer the same thing. A checkout that technically accepts a Visa or Mastercard may be functional, but it may not feel complete, familiar or trustworthy to the person using it.
Pádraig Slattery, SVP of Commercial, Europe at Nuvei, says the discussion has moved beyond “simply accepting payments”. That distinction is crucial for telemedia, where the payment step is often inseparable from the service itself.
A consumer buying digital content, entering a competition, paying for a stream, subscribing to a service, topping up an account or purchasing inside a game is not necessarily making the same payment decision each time. Low-value and spontaneous transactions reward speed. Recurring services require confidence in future billing and easy cancellation. Gaming and creator-economy services may need rapid pay-ins and payouts.
A consumer encountering an unfamiliar service through social media or messaging may want the reassurance of a known wallet or local payment brand. In some contexts, direct carrier billing remains the most natural route because it removes card entry altogether and places the charge on an existing mobile relationship.
No single rail optimises all of those situations:
- Cards bring reach and familiarity;
- Wallets reduce input and work naturally on mobile;
- Account-to-account payments can lower cost and settle rapidly;
- Direct carrier billing can reach users who either cannot or do not want to use a card;
- Prepaid methods support control and privacy;
- and BNPL creates flexibility around larger purchases. The point is not that one of these will defeat all the others. It is that consumers value each for different reasons.
This makes payments orchestration strategically important. Businesses need to be able to present the relevant methods by market, device, transaction value and customer context, then route payments intelligently behind the scenes. They also need fallback options when a transaction is declined. A failed card payment need not become a failed sale if the customer can move immediately to a wallet, bank payment, carrier charge or other trusted alternative.
Choice, though, must not become clutter. Throwing every available logo onto every checkout can create as much friction as offering too few. The goal is relevant abundance: enough rails to accommodate real consumer preferences, ordered and presented so that the most suitable options are easy to recognise.
Five markets, five payment personalities
The study’s country findings show why a nominally pan-European payments strategy can fail in practice.
The UK – British consumers are characterised as “the controllers”. Seventy per cent tend to use the same way to pay and the same proportion want to review and approve every purchase personally – the highest figure in the study. Only 15% are comfortable allowing an AI assistant to complete a purchase, while just 19% say the payment options offered influence whether they take a brand seriously.
This does not mean UK merchants can settle for cards alone. PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Klarna and Pay by Bank all sit within the familiar British repertoire, while direct carrier billing has a well-established role in mobile content, ticketing, charity donations, voting and other telemedia services. What British consumers appear to want most is control allied to familiarity: a method they recognise, a charge they understand and an explicit moment of approval.
Germany – Germany’s “pragmatists” are the most payment-agnostic group in the research. Sixty per cent say standard card payments are sufficient, the highest proportion among the five markets, and 56% say payment options do not affect their view of a brand. Only 22% expect a site to offer their preferred method and 23% are likely to abandon when it is missing.
Even here, however, pragmatism is not uniformity. SEPA, Klarna, Wero and other bank-based or deferred-payment options sit alongside PayPal and cards. The German lesson is not to flood checkout with novelty, but to ensure reliability and provide the smaller set of methods customers already trust.
Italy – Italy’s “evaluators” are more deliberate. Twenty-nine per cent actively choose the method that works best for the purchase, while 30% expect a website to offer their preference and the same percentage may abandon if it does not. More than a quarter – 27% – say the options offered influence whether they take a brand seriously. Alongside cards and PayPal, services such as PostePay, Satispay, Bancomat Pay, Scalapay and MyBank create a distinctly local mix.
Poland – Poland’s “progressives” are the most open and the least forgiving. Forty-five per cent are comfortable using a new payment method as soon as it becomes available; 32% expect their preferred option to be present; and 31% are likely to abandon if it is missing, the highest level in the research. One quarter are already comfortable letting AI complete a purchase.
BLIK is the clearest illustration of the power of a local rail. Its six-digit, bank-app-based experience is not merely another button beside a card form. It is a familiar domestic behaviour. Przelewy24, PayU and PayPo further distinguish the Polish checkout. A merchant that launches in Poland with only an internationally standard card-and-wallet combination may be technically open for business while remaining culturally under-equipped to convert.
Benelux – finally, Benelux consumers are “the considered adopters”. Only 29% are willing to try new payment methods immediately, compared with a five-market average of 39%, while 35% prefer to wait until people they know use a method. Established local brands consequently carry exceptional weight: iDEAL in the Netherlands, Bancontact in Belgium and Payconiq across parts of the region, supported by SEPA and other alternatives.
Payment methods are also trust marks
The research goes on to show that payment choice affects more than transaction mechanics. Twenty-seven per cent of respondents rely more on the payment method than the retailer’s brand to feel confident at checkout. The figure rises to 30% in Poland and 29% in both Italy and Benelux. Meanwhile, 23% across the five markets say the payment options available influence whether they take a business seriously.
This gives payment brands a role similar to trust marks. When a consumer encounters an unfamiliar merchant, a recognised wallet, bank-payment scheme, carrier relationship or national method can lend credibility that the merchant has not yet earned for itself. Guy Douek, Nuvei’s General Manager for Europe, neatly captures the tension: infrastructure connects, but “expectations stay local”.
That is especially important for telemedia services, which are frequently discovered outside a conventional retail journey. A user may arrive from an advert, influencer post, affiliate link, QR code, RCS message or social platform and be asked to transact with a brand they barely know. In that setting, the payment method can become the most familiar name on the page.
DCB providers, wallets, banks, payment service providers and local alternative-payment schemes should therefore see themselves as conversion and confidence partners, not just pipes. Their visible presence can reduce perceived risk; their authentication can reassure the user; and their transaction data can help merchants understand which routes work for which audiences.
The rails are converging – and multiplying
None of this means cards are disappearing. European Central Bank figures show that cards accounted for 57% of non-cash transactions in the euro area in the first half of 2025. Yet credit transfers accounted for 22%, direct debits 14% and e-money 6%. Even at the infrastructure level, “payments” is already plural.
That plurality is set to deepen. Since October 2025, EU rules have required euro-area providers to support instant euro transfers, day and night, across the eurozone. Open Banking is turning bank accounts into checkout instruments. Wero is attempting to build a cross-European account-to-account proposition. Wallets continue to abstract cards and other funding sources. The possible digital euro is being designed as an additional choice rather than a compulsory replacement for existing methods.
This is the European payments paradox. Policy and infrastructure are making the underlying system more interoperable, but that does not necessarily produce one dominant consumer interface. Common rails can support an even wider variety of brands, wallets, overlays and experiences. Back-end convergence may generate front-end diversity.
For telemedia companies, this creates opportunity on both sides. Services can reach more consumers by combining cards, wallets, bank payments, DCB and locally relevant APMs. Payment and network providers can offer the orchestration, identity, fraud management, recurring billing, messaging and data needed to make those methods work together.
The winners will not simply connect the largest number of rails, they will decide which to show, how to authenticate them, how to route traffic, how to recover declines and how to reconcile the resulting payment streams. They must also preserve a coherent customer view across the mix. Multiple payment options should not mean multiple disconnected customer experiences.
AI must preserve the moment of consent
The research also offers a warning for the emerging agentic-commerce market. Only 19% of European consumers are comfortable allowing an AI assistant to complete a purchase, while 49% would rather wait and see how other people use AI buying tools first. Two-thirds – 67% – still want to review and approve every transaction personally.
Advait Sinha, VP Product at Nuvei, makes the point succinctly: “Innovation on its own does not build trust.”
For now, the more credible role for AI is to assemble the basket, compare choices, select an appropriate payment route and prepare the transaction, while leaving the consumer with a clear final approval. That model is particularly relevant to subscriptions, digital content and other telemedia services, where a purchase may create a continuing billing relationship rather than a one-off exchange.
Agentic payments will eventually add another layer to orchestration. Merchants may need to accept not only different consumer payment methods but transactions initiated through different agents and protocols. Yet the Nuvei results suggest that technical capability is running ahead of consumer permission. Transparent mandates, spending limits, audit trails, easy revocation and an unmistakable consent step will matter as much as speed.
From payment acceptance to payment optionality
The old checkout question was: can this business take a payment? The new question is: can it take the payment this customer wants to make, on this device, in this country, for this kind of purchase – and offer another route instantly if the first one fails?
That is a much higher bar. It requires local acquiring, alternative payment connections, intelligent routing, common fraud controls, consistent reporting and automated reconciliation. It also requires businesses to measure performance at rail level: not only the cost of each method, but its effect on authorisation, abandonment, repeat use, chargebacks and customer lifetime value.
For the telemedia industry, the shift plays directly to its strengths. The sector already sits at the junction of mobile identity, messaging, content, billing and high-volume digital transactions. DCB should be part of the mix where it solves a real access or convenience problem, not treated as a universal replacement for cards or bank payments. The same is true of every other rail. The strategic advantage lies in combining them.
Europe may be creating a more unified payments infrastructure, but Europeans still pay according to local habits, personal circumstances and the needs of the moment. Businesses that mistake infrastructure convergence for consumer uniformity will leave revenue at checkout. Those that offer controlled, relevant optionality can turn payments from the last technical step of a sale into part of the reason it is completed.
Methodology: Nuvei commissioned Sapio Research to survey 5,000 consumers online in July 2026, with roughly 1,000 respondents in each of five markets: the UK, Germany, Italy, Poland and Benelux, covering Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Samples were nationally representative by age, gender and region. Nuvei reports a margin of error of ±1.4 percentage points at 95% confidence.
Access the full report here and sign up to attend World Telemedia Marbella where payments and payment orchestration takes centre stage – get your pass here.
