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.

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

The European Payments Initiative, a consortium of 16 major banks and payment processors including BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and Worldline, launched Wero in July 2024 as Europe’s answer. Built on SEPA instant credit transfers, Wero lets users send money using just a phone number — no IBAN, no card, no intermediary.

The numbers so far are encouraging. Wero already has over 47 million registered users in Belgium, France and Germany, has processed over €7.5 billion in transfers, and counts more than 1,100 member institutions. Retail payments went live in Germany at the end of 2025, with merchants including Lidl, Decathlon, Rossmann and Air Europa already accepting Wero online. France and Belgium follow in 2026.

But the real breakthrough came on 2 February, when EPI signed a memorandum of understanding with the EuroPA Alliance — a coalition of national payment systems including Italy’s Bancomat, Spain’s Bizum, Portugal’s MB WAY and the Nordics’ Vipps MobilePay. The deal instantly connects approximately 130 million users across 13 countries, covering roughly 72% of the EU and Norway population. Cross-border peer-to-peer payments launch this year, with e-commerce and point-of-sale payments following in 2027.

“European payment sovereignty is not a vision, but a reality in the making,” said Martina Weimert, CEO of EPI.

Why Previous Attempts Failed

Europe has tried this before. The Monnet Project, launched in 2008 by twenty European banks, collapsed in 2012. The original EPI vision itself was scaled back after several founding members withdrew, forcing a pivot from a full card-replacement scheme to a narrower account-to-account model.

The core problem has always been fragmentation. Each EU country developed its own domestic payment solution — Bizum in Spain, iDEAL in the Netherlands, Payconiq in Belgium, Girocard in Germany — but none could work across borders. A Belgian consumer buying from a Dutch retailer still needed Visa or Mastercard. National pride and competing banking interests repeatedly sabotaged attempts at unification.

The network effect compounds the challenge. Merchants accept Visa and Mastercard because consumers carry them. Consumers carry them because merchants accept them. Breaking that loop requires either regulatory force or a critical mass of users large enough to make merchants care — which is precisely what the EuroPA deal attempts to deliver by connecting existing national user bases rather than building from scratch.

The Digital Euro Question

Running in parallel is the ECB’s digital euro project, which would create a central bank-backed digital currency usable across the eurozone. EU finance ministers have accelerated discussions on the initiative, though the European Parliament has not yet passed the required legislation. Once approved, the ECB estimates it would need a further two to three years to launch.

EPI is careful to distinguish Wero from the digital euro. Wero is a private-sector initiative; the digital euro is public money. They are designed to complement rather than compete — though the overlap in ambition is obvious. Both exist because Europe’s political establishment has finally accepted that payments sovereignty is as strategically important as energy independence or defence autonomy.

Can It Actually Work?

Sceptics have good reasons for doubt. Creating a viable alternative to Visa and Mastercard requires “several billion euros” in investment, according to EPI’s own estimates. Low interchange fees under EU regulation make profitability difficult. Consumer habits are deeply entrenched — and neither Visa nor Mastercard will sit idle while Europe tries to dismantle their most profitable market.

Weimert herself concedes that calling Wero a “challenger” may be premature, describing it as functioning like a startup — albeit one with €500 million in backing and 47 million users already on board.

But the political tailwinds are stronger than they have ever been. The EU’s instant payments regulation, the Capital Markets Union push, the broader drive for European strategic autonomy in a world of tariff wars and great power rivalry — all point in the same direction. The question is no longer whether Europe wants its own payment infrastructure. It is whether it can execute fast enough to matter.

As Lagarde put it: “We have the assets and opportunities to do that ourselves. And if we were to remove the internal barriers that we have set for ourselves in Europe, our economic wealth would increase significantly.”