Europe’s payment system runs on borrowed infrastructure. Every time a European taps a card, two American corporations—Visa and Mastercard—sit in the middle of the transaction. That dependence isn’t just inconvenient; it’s a strategic liability. No continent serious about sovereignty should allow foreign companies to control the rails of its everyday economy.
For all its talk of strategic autonomy, the European Union still relies on two American corporations—Visa and Mastercard—to run the vast majority of its card‑based payments. This dependence is more than an economic inconvenience; it is a structural vulnerability. When two foreign companies control the rails on which European commerce runs, the EU’s financial stability is ultimately contingent on decisions made in boardrooms far from Brussels. A single pricing change, a technical outage, or a geopolitical dispute could ripple across the continent’s economy. No union that aspires to sovereignty should accept such fragility at the core of its financial system.
The cost of this dependence is not abstract. European merchants and consumers pay billions each year in interchange and network fees set by Visa and Mastercard. Regulators have tried to rein in these charges, but the fundamental imbalance remains: Europe is negotiating with companies that own the infrastructure. A European alternative would flip that dynamic. Instead of retrofitting foreign networks to fit European rules, the EU could design a system grounded in transparency, fair pricing, and competition. Small businesses—those most squeezed by today’s fee structures—would feel the benefits first.
There is also a deeper issue at stake: data sovereignty. Every card transaction generates sensitive information about consumer behaviour, business activity, and economic flows. Today, much of that data passes through non‑EU systems. For a bloc that has led the world in digital rights and privacy regulation, this is an untenable contradiction. A European payment network would allow the EU to govern its own financial data according to its own standards, reinforcing the principles behind GDPR and the Digital Markets Act. Control of data is control of the future, and Europe should not cede that ground.
Finally, building a European alternative is not just about reducing risk—it is about unlocking innovation. A home grown network could be designed to integrate instant payments, digital identity, and the coming digital euro from day one. It could support cross‑border interoperability across the single market in ways today’s systems never fully have. Europe has the talent, the regulatory vision, and the economic scale to build a modern payment infrastructure that reflects its values and ambitions. What it lacks is the political will. If the EU is serious about autonomy, competitiveness, and digital leadership, it must stop outsourcing its financial backbone and start building its own.
Europe can’t keep outsourcing its financial backbone and pretending it’s autonomy. The tools, talent, and market scale for a European alternative already exist—what’s missing is the political will to build it. If the EU wants real sovereignty, it must stop relying on Visa and Mastercard and start owning the infrastructure that powers its economy.
