Bizum, Spain's mobile payment platform, has installed its new Bizum Pay system on more than 1.6 million card terminals across the country, according to company data. That figure represents over 85% of all point-of-sale terminals in Spain.
Having a compatible terminal does not mean a shop can actually be paid through Bizum Pay yet. Each business must separately activate the service through its bank and agree on the conditions for using it, meaning the technology's rollout is running well ahead of its availability to shoppers.
Rollout expected to speed up after summer
The industry expects deployment to pick up pace from September, once the summer holiday period ends. A mass rollout is planned for after the summer, between September and October 2026.
Bizum Pay is built specifically for paying in physical shops using a mobile phone. It runs on NFC technology and can be set as a phone's default payment app. One of its key differences from other digital wallets is that it can charge a purchase directly to a user's linked bank account, though it also allows a card to be linked instead.
With the launch, Bizum is aiming to move fully into physical payments and compete with major international networks, chiefly Visa and Mastercard. The company starts from a position of strength in Spain thanks to the high adoption it has built up over the past decade.
More than 32 million users
Bizum currently has more than 32 million users and over 100,000 participating merchants offering the service for online payments. A large share of Spanish e-commerce already runs through Bizum, giving the company a broad customer base to draw on for its new physical payment system.
The challenge now is carrying that online success into physical shops. Bizum has not yet disclosed how many people are using Bizum Pay or the volume of transactions processed since launch, though it expects to begin setting usage targets in the coming months.
The expansion also comes at a favourable moment for mobile payments generally. Acceptance of this type of transaction among businesses in the eurozone has risen sharply, climbing from 36% in 2024 to 68%, according to the latest available data.
Bizum also speeding up abroad
The expansion of Bizum Pay coincides with the platform's international growth. Spanish users can already send money to Italy and Portugal, while the company is working to extend this interoperability to other European countries from 2027, including France and Germany.
