MB Way Goes European — Cross-Border Transfers to 13 Countries Coming This Year, In-Store Payments in 2027

Portugal's dominant mobile payments app is about to stop being a Portugal-only tool. At an industry event in Lisbon on 16 April, SIBS — the operator of MB Way — confirmed that users will be able to send and receive money from 12 other European countries by the end of 2026, and that in-store and online purchases using the app will follow in 2027.

The announcement is the most concrete timeline yet for a pan-European payments network that has been quietly assembled over the past year.

What was announced

Teresa Mesquita, administrator at SIBS, shared the stage with Massimo Itta of Italy's Bancomat and Alfred Baroulier of the European Payments Initiative (EPI) — the consortium that owns the Wero wallet used across the Benelux, France and Germany. The three executives demonstrated interoperability between their respective local payment apps, showing how a phone from one country could complete a transaction at a merchant registered in another.

By the end of this year, MB Way users will be able to send money to, and receive money from, users in the following 13 countries (including Portugal): Andorra, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. A mobile number, as in domestic transfers, will be enough.

In-store and online payments in those same markets — using either QR code or NFC on a smartphone — are targeted for 2027.

How the network came together

Earlier in 2026, SIBS, Bancomat, the Nordic app Vipps MobilePay and the EPI signed a cooperation protocol designed to accelerate the interoperability of Europe's otherwise fragmented mobile-payment ecosystem. Between them, the four groups represent around 130 million users — a scale comparable to the largest private wallets operating on the continent.

A first step went live in mid-2025, when MB Way customers became able to transfer money by phone number to users of Spain's Bizum and Italy's Bancomat. The new roadmap extends that bridge to the wider European footprint of Wero and Vipps MobilePay.

SIBS declined to disclose the investment figures involved or any specific business targets.

Why it matters for residents and expats

MB Way is, in practice, the default peer-to-peer money app in Portugal — baked into every major retail bank's mobile application and used for everything from splitting a dinner bill to paying a plumber. Cross-border functionality has historically meant falling back on SEPA transfers, international bank codes, or third-party apps such as Revolut and Wise.

For expats with ties to France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Benelux or the Nordics, the roadmap implies that sending euros to a friend, landlord or family member in those countries will become as frictionless as a domestic MB Way payment — no IBAN, no SWIFT code, and (if SIBS matches its domestic pricing) no fees.

The 2027 in-store rollout would go further still: a Portuguese resident travelling in Paris or Berlin would be able to pay a merchant directly from MB Way, and a French visitor in Lisbon could settle a bill from Wero. In a market still dominated by schemes such as Visa and Mastercard, that is a meaningful attempt by Europe's domestic wallets to carve out their own interoperable footprint.

The timeline, however, depends on commercial agreements at the merchant level in each country, and SIBS was careful to frame the 2027 target as an objective rather than a firm date.