I'm not sure that replacing Visa and MasterCard is really that big of a sovereignty move considering the pervasive dominance American mobile OS tech has. It's a much harder ecosystem to replace.
Wero can fix the dependency on Google in a day, I don't think the dependency on Google is as bad as the broader dependency on Mastercard/Visa is.
That said, I'd much prefer a European implementation of the same remote attestation APIs that Google uses to convince payment processors that phones can be trusted to manage finances.
On iOS you don't really have a choice so until someone runs Linux on an iPhone, iPhone users are just screwed.
Phones can NOT be trusted to manage finances. They should issue EU credit/debit cards instead.
You're basically talking about "government Android phone" since it is built into the chips on the device.
I wonder how 330 million average Europeans will respond to not being able to use iPhones or Google Android phones anymore because they are instead being forced to use "government Android phone" for safety from USA.
I think they'll actually just revolt against the government instead
Not to mention that the EU seems to be incapable of actually building usable software, let alone a whole mobile OS ecosystem
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-microsoft-teams-alternati...
So 'having an apple or Google phone' is equivalent to you to 'have every individual payment processed by visa/mastercard'?
Processing a payment means knowing who sent what to whom. I'm sure you don't care if I know what phone you have. But can I see every bank transaction you make? Every single purchase? No biggie, right?
Aside from the fact that this is maybe the next dependency to drop.
If you don't, two lock-ins and network effects reinforce each other.
This will allow me to use my card online with a merchant in Germany for example and use my Bancomat process (whatever the new interface is called) will be the gateway.
That's exactly what they did to high profile European judges. You can't pull that stunt and expect to get away with it long term.
https://www.euronews.com/2026/02/18/us-sanctions-turn-intern...
Looking at it from the privacy lens doesn't help when it's a matter of directly controlling the money flow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...
Anyway, I don't know if you actually read GDPR, but the government (& various agencies) and the bank are both exempted from GDPR. They will all know everything I bought through this system, from where and at what price.
UPI now interoperates with other equivalent new payment platforms in Asia.
Edit: There was also the Euro Alliance of Payment Schemes
Regional Financial autonomy is a very attractive benefit.
In Australia the system is the NPP, and the public face is Osko/PayID, so you can use an email or mobile identifier to instantly transfer money between people's accounts. Australia is rolling out PayTo, which is a B2C form of direct debit, which is revocable by the customer but allows for subscriptions and other payments.
The next step will be offering a bank account with PayID/PayTo, a contactless form of payment stored in a Google/Apple/Samsung Wallet, and a line of credit.
Which is all that a credit card is.
This announcement is about similar national systems evolving into cross-European payments. So an instant payment from a French bank account to a Spanish bank account via contactless payment terminal without using the Visa/MC "rails". In Thailand it's promptpay
So I assume that if they were accepting more expensive cards, they might've increase the price of the $100.16 product for me, to offset their costs.
And yes, I also heard that payment processors have rules that require merchants to have the same price no matter what payment processor (or cash) customer will choose.
People are only answering me here with benefits for European politicians and their sovereignty. That's alright. But what I'm asking about is benefits for the users.
For example, Visa and Mastercard offer fraud protection to the users, and many card emitters offer cashback to their users. Can this new European system offer this? If not, why not? Can they offer something else which benefits the user over current providers?
I answered that it will lower prices, does that not count as a benefit to users?
Even if merchants pay the processing fees, those prices are inevitably passed onto their customers. With more competition among payment processors there will be pressure to lower processing fees.
All of this happens automatically. It’s the beauty of markets.
I’ll rephrase your own question in a different way that I think actually supports my point: Since there is no difference, as a product, between visa, Mastercard, and this new European alliance, then there is very little reason to not want more competition.
Payment processing is essentially a commodity in this sense. It’s all the same, with the differentiator being supply. If we increase the supply the price will go down. That’s it. It should honestly be stupid to not want a European alternative.
I think you’re taking about a single transaction in the near future, whereas I’m talking about the effects which are felt, in aggregate, over a long period of time. Absolutely things will get slightly cheaper.
The change is that newer financial systems, using ISO20022, run at bank level, allow instant net settlement between individual accounts, not just settlement at the bank level.
So the benefits to merchants/customers compared to Visa/MC:
Merchants
* Interchange is much cheaper, because the banks transact via the central clearing house which is usually sponsored by the country's reserve bank
* It allows for the merchant to set up direct debit payment structures that allow for things like subscriptions and other payments to be made with similar network and transaction fee savings
* It has all of the advantages of EFT and CC payments
* It can use QR codes, email addresses, and mobile numbers as identifiers, so it is much easier to pass on payment details. Merchants can operate with just a printed QR code, verifying payment on the customer's mobile.
Customers
* Banks can offer all of the same "perks" of credit cards, like lines of credit, branding, account holder offers.
* They can offer things like product insurance and return protection and similar consumer protections.
The "rails" are much cheaper to run and suits a 21st century financial system and is easier and more secure for consumers.
As a customer, I have zero interest in paying for my lunch via "QR codes, email addresses, and mobile numbers" when I can do it with near-zero friction with a double-click on a phone (funded by a credit card), or with a tap or swipe of the credit card. I also have better protections. Switching costs are non-zero and I will only switch if there are some substantial benefits; pure "feature parity" is a reason to not switch.
The benefits to merchants are tangential to me, but there is a substantial downside of all the merchants having to do integration with an additional system.
If CCs were the system of the last 75 years to allow quick transactions, these systems are the next generation.
The US is a specific banking market that has a very embedded structure, regulation, and players. Other nations have a more flexible financial system that allows for services to develop that are better than the existing Visa/MC duopoly.
This is just the next step of allowing them to operate cross-border/jurisdiction.
The fact that you have zero interest does not mean there are many small merchants and customers that find the ability to easily transfer money instantly with very low fees and the same safety as cash is a very useful service.
https://www.irishtimes.com/world/us/2025/12/12/its-surreal-u...
This is probably what pushed them to accelerate the implementation.
Removing reliance on American tooling is an essential security matter, it's going to take some time to unpick 80 years of interdependence though.
The question here is "what is the benefit to individual users," not "what is the benefit to the users community as a whole."
I know that JCB exists in Japan and Mir exists in Russia, but never saw them accepted anywhere except these countries respectively.
IBAN, I'll grant you. But it's not exactly intuitive.
Solution looking for a problem?
https://www.euronews.com/2026/09/28/north-korean-hackers-sus...
In Europe I can literally type someone's IBAN and hit send, if arrives in seconds. So not sure what I need a stablecoin for.
Unfortunately, I did a copy & paste error by reusing the prior version and not overwriting all the data - I forgot to replace the bank account number, but name & co was OK.
The money didnt arrive, customer was getting angrier and angrier. Esp. since this transaction was related to crypto and back then was one of first BTC highflyertimes.
A couple of days later I received a message from the bank, asking for having a quick call. In the meantime, they had called the customer to investigate even more.
Quickly we found out that it was just my mistake by copying & re-using the form. I sent them a SWIFT message confirming what was discussed and that the right account number is indeed 123 instead of 678.
In the end, all of us were happy, even with a little delay.
Im 100% sure that this type of cooperation would never work on any of these crypto stacks :-))