What if tomorrow, your credit card came from Berlin instead of San Francisco? Europe dreams of freeing itself from Visa and Mastercard... but the road ahead looks strewn with pitfalls.
Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, has thrown a spanner in the works: the EU must develop its own payment system to escape the hegemony of Visa, Mastercard, and Alipay. The stated objective: "financial sovereignty" and a single capital market capable of injecting €2.8 trillion into the economy by 2032. But between words and reality, there is an ocean of challenges.
Faced with giants that have been established for decades, Europe is starting from scratch. The project, called the "Capital Markets Union" (CMU), aims to harmonize financial rules between Member States. The idea? To make it easier for businesses to raise funds and for savers to invest their money without borders. A European dream... worth several billion euros.
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A European network, why is it a hassle?
First obstacle: interchange fees. In Europe, they are capped at 0.2% for debit cards, compared to 2% in the United States. As a result, the revenues of local players are almost non-existent. It's difficult to convince investors to finance a new, less profitable system.
Then, a rival infrastructure must be built. Visa processes 65,000 transactions per second. Creating such a high-performance network would require billions of euros and years of work. Not to mention cross-border compatibility: each country has its own habits (instant transfers in Germany, cards in France, etc.).
Add to this consumer distrust. "Europeans are attached to their credit card, even if it's American,” notes one analyst. Merchants, for their part, will have to update their terminals. And the banks? They often prefer proven solutions.
Finally, governance. Should we have a public system, like the EPI (European Payments Initiative), or a private one? France and Germany are already at odds over the model. In this context, recent trade tensions with the United States (Trump's customs tariffs) and China add urgency. But will Europe succeed in unite before Apple Pay and Alipay completely dominate the market? One thing is certain: without a credible alternative, the EU will remain at the mercy of foreign giants. It remains to be seen whether citizens will agree to swap their Visa for a "Eurocard"... which does not yet exist.
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