ECB President Christine Lagarde has called for Europe to break its dependence on American payment infrastructure, warning that every card transaction sends European consumer data to the United States. A coalition of 16 banks thinks it has the answer.
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What’s happening? ECB President Christine Lagarde told Irish radio that Europe needs its own digital payment system “urgently,” warning that virtually all European card and mobile payments currently run through non-European infrastructure controlled by Visa, Mastercard, PayPal or Alipay. Days later, on 2 February, the European Payments Initiative (EPI) and the EuroPA Alliance signed a landmark agreement to build a pan-European interoperable payment network covering 130 million users across 13 countries. The system, built around the digital wallet Wero, aims to let Europeans pay and transfer money across borders without touching a single American network.
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The Problem No One Thinks About
Every time a European taps a card, pays online or splits a bill with friends, the transaction flows through infrastructure owned and operated by American companies. Visa and Mastercard together process approximately $24 trillion in transactions annually. Card payments account for 56% of all cashless transactions in the EU. And the data — who bought what, where, when and for how much — leaves European jurisdiction every time.
“It’s important for us to have digital payment under our control,” Lagarde told The Pat Kenny Show. “Whether you use a card or whether you use a phone, typically it goes through Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Alipay. Where are all those coming from? Well, either the US or China.”
The host’s response — “I didn’t realise this” — captured the broader European blind spot. Most consumers have no idea that their payment data routinely exits the EU. In a geopolitical environment where Europe is scrambling to reduce dependence on the United States across defence, energy and trade, payments remain an overlooked vulnerability.
The lesson of Russia sharpened the urgency. When Western sanctions cut Russia off from Visa and Mastercard in 2022, the country’s domestic payments were immediately disrupted. European policymakers asked the obvious question: what would happen if the US decided — or was pressured — to restrict European access to those same networks?
Enter Wero
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