Visa and Mastercard handle most card payments in Europe and charge fees we do not control. Europe already has an answer: Wero, SEPA Instant and the digital euro. Here is the scale of it.
In the eurozone Visa and Mastercard handle nearly half of the value and most of the number of card payments. In 13 of 21 eurozone countries cards run exclusively on international schemes, because those countries have no domestic system.
The 2015 IFR regulation capped interchange at 0.2% (debit) and 0.3% (credit). But scheme & processing fees, which go to the networks themselves, are not capped and keep rising, cancelling the effect of the regulation. There are now over 800 different types.
The European Central Bank talks about payments as strategic infrastructure, on a par with energy and defence. Because if the daily transactions of hundreds of millions of Europeans run through two US firms, then they, not Europe, hold the switch.
"If we lose control of our money, we lose control of our economic destiny. And we surrender a key attribute of sovereignty."
European Central Bank, 2026Europe is not starting from scratch. Institutions and banks have built the foundation for a real alternative to the American duopoly.
The European Payments Initiative wallet (16 banks), built on SEPA instant transfers. No scheme fee.
Instant transfers in seconds, settled in central-bank money through ECB infrastructure.
Central-bank money in digital form. The ECB treats its launch as urgent for Europe's sovereignty.
Payments are critical infrastructure. Depending on two US firms is a geopolitical risk, not just a cost.
IFR capped interchange, but scheme fees rise without limit. A European payment rail bypasses the problem at its source.
Whoever processes the transactions sees the data. A home system keeps it in Europe, under GDPR and EU law.
An open instant-payments standard is room for European fintechs instead of rent paid to the duopoly.
Figures come from different studies with different definitions (scheme fees, foreign-card acceptance, overpay vs IFR caps), so they are shown separately, not as one sum. Volume and shares per ECB via Euronews. Scheme-fee values are estimates due to the networks' undisclosed rates.
Wero, SEPA Instant and the digital euro are not ideology, they are infrastructure that already works. Every payment moved from Visa and Mastercard to a European system means less rent abroad and more control in Europe.