Payment Sovereignty, European Style: How EPI and the Digital Euro Are Challenging Visa and Mastercard

February 9, 2026, EU. Imagine your financial system is a highway. It’s fast, convenient, with trillions of euros moving along it daily. But the toll booths on this road belong to foreign corporations that dictate the rules, collect fees, and can change the terms of passage at any moment.

This is roughly how Martina Weimert, the Executive Director of the European Payments Initiative (EPI) consortium, sees Europe’s dependence on Visa and Mastercard. Her recent interview with the Financial Times is not just criticism but a direct call to action. “We need urgent action,” she stated. And Europe has begun that action. However, on two fronts that sometimes compete with each other.

Figures from the European Central Bank (ECB) leave no doubt about the scale of the problem: in 2022, almost two-thirds of all card payments in the eurozone were processed by the two American giants. In 13 union countries, there was no national alternative at all. A situation highlighted a year ago by ECB President Christine Lagarde, who called the creation of a European alternative a matter of financial control and preparedness for unpredictable situations. After such statements, the question of “should something change?” became irrelevant. The most difficult part remained: “how?”. For investors and fintech companies in the US and UK, this push for European payment sovereignty signals a shift in the global financial landscape, potentially creating new partnership opportunities with European entities or intensifying competition for digital wallet market share.

Private Front: The EPI Consortium and its Wero

The first path is market-driven, private-banking. The EPI consortium, which includes titans like BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank, made its move back in 2024, launching the payment app Wero – Europe’s answer to Apple Pay. To date, the service already has 48.5 million users in Germany, France, and Belgium. Plans are ambitious: by 2027, to expand into online payments and offline retail across all of Europe. This is an attempt to create the “cross-border” alternative Weimert speaks of, acknowledging that despite “good national assets,” the EU lacks a unified solution. However, according to FT (access to the material may be paid) the EPI path is evolution, not revolution. They are competing for the user within an already established ecosystem.

State Front: The Digital Euro as the Foundation of Sovereignty

The second path is state-driven, and it is much more radical. This is the digital euro project promoted by the ECB. The idea is to create not just another payment service, but a digital version of cash issued by the central bank. As noted by the Chair of the European Parliament’s Economic Committee, Aurora Laluk, this could provide “a foundation on which, after consolidation, a European equivalent of Visa or Mastercard could potentially be built.” A year ago in a podcast, Christine Lagarde stated directly that Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and Alipay are controlled by American or Chinese companies, and the EU must create an alternative to maintain control over its finances.

But there is a serious internal contradiction here. Private banks, which are part of the same EPI, fear that the digital euro, especially if it allows accounts to be opened directly with the ECB, will undermine their deposit base and role in payments. The vote in the European Parliament on this project later this year is predicted to be “very tense and decided by a minimal margin.”

The Battle for the European Wallet: What Does It Mean for Business and Ukraine?

This European “payment war” is not just an internal Brussels matter. It is directly relevant to Ukrainian businesses, especially those operating with the EU.

1. New Opportunities for Fintech. The emergence of new, open European payment infrastructure (whether EPI or APIs for the digital euro) will create space for niche solutions. Ukrainian developers, strong in IT, will be able to offer their services on top of these platforms.
2. Reduced Transaction Costs. Competition is always beneficial. If merchants gain a real European choice beyond the Visa/Mastercard duopoly, this could exert downward pressure on acquiring fees for Ukrainian companies selling in the EU.
3. A Lesson in Financial Sovereignty. Europe is clearly demonstrating that control over critical financial infrastructure is a matter of national (or supranational) security. This is a lesson worth learning, especially in the context of integration with the EU and building our own resilient financial system.

Thus, what is happening in the EU is not only a battle of technologies but also the formation of a new competitive and political reality in the financial market. Ukraine, as a future participant in the single European space, must closely monitor this process, preparing not only to adapt to new rules but also to benefit from them, strengthening its own technological and economic potential.

Who Will Win: Banks, Bureaucrats, or American Giants?

The outcome of this struggle is hard to predict. EPI, despite powerful backers, must convince millions of Europeans to download yet another app and change their habits. The digital euro needs to overcome banking lobby resistance and solve the most complex issues of privacy and technical implementation.

But the very fact that Europe has taken up the task of solving a problem that was hardly discussed ten years ago is telling. The world is moving towards the regionalization of critical infrastructures, and finance is at the forefront. Even if neither Wero nor the digital euro “kill” Visa and Mastercard in the next decade, they will create that very competitive environment and technological foundation that will allow Europe to cease being “very dependent.” And in the modern world, that is already half the battle. For the EU, it is a question of control. For everyone else – a precedent worth watching closely.