The European Payments Initiative (EPI) is an initiative backed by 16 European banks and financial services companies to offer Wero, an payment solution…
The European Payments Initiative (EPI) is an initiative backed by 16 European banks and financial services companies to offer Wero, an payment solution…
What Europe needs is its own payment card network to step up against the quasi dupoly of MasterCard and Visa (AmEx and Discovery aren’t that widely used or even available in Europe)
Perhaps by-pass credit cards completely?
Digital Euro is coming in 2029, if their current timeline holds. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro
Norway already has the BankAxept system in wide use. It is mainly used with debit cards though, as far as I know, not credit cards. The fees for using BankAxept are lower than Visa/Mastercard for the merchants, and most debit cards from Norwegian banks have a combination of Visa/Mastercard and BankAxept functionality included. Most merchant terminals are set up to prefer the latter tech, falling back to Visa/MC if the card isn’t BankAxept equipped.
So some of the tech is already there.
We have Bancontact in Belgium which is independent from Visa or Mastercard.
I assume the investment for that would be too high on a technology/system that might have its days numbered alrsady…