Payment Trends in Europe with VISA and Mastercard

Last Updated on March 18, 2026 by Staff Writer

What’s Going On In Europe With Payments?

Strategic takeaway: Europe isn’t dumping Visa and Mastercard—it’s quietly rewiring the plumbing so that, by the end of this decade, US card schemes become optional rather than existential for its domestic payments. Euronews

Question: did Europe just turn their back on VISA and Mastercard

Answer:

Not entirely, but the “breakup” has officially started. As of March 2026, Europe is making its most aggressive move in decades to end its 95% dependence on U.S. payment infrastructure.

It’s less of a sudden “turning of the back” and more of a massive, coordinated “eviction notice” through three major projects:

1. The Wero Wallet (The Practical Alternative)

The European Payments Initiative (EPI), a consortium of 16 major banks (including Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas), has hit critical mass.

• The Milestone: As of February 2026, Wero has 48.5 million users across Germany, France, and Belgium.

• The Move: In the last few weeks, a landmark deal was signed to merge Wero with other national systems like Spain’s Bizum and Italy’s Bancomat. This creates a single network of 130 million users who can pay each other and merchants without ever touching a Visa or Mastercard rail.

• Implementation: E-commerce payments are live in Germany and France right now, with NFC (tap-to-pay) scheduled for a full rollout across the EU later this year.

2. The Digital Euro (The Sovereign Alternative)

On February 10, 2026, the European Parliament officially voted to back the Digital Euro.

• The Goal: It is designed to be “digital cash”—a public-sector alternative to private U.S. cards.

• The “Why”: ECB President Christine Lagarde recently warned that relying on non-European infrastructure for 99% of digital payments is a “strategic vulnerability.” They want a system that works even if U.S. companies were to pull out (as they did in Russia).

3. The UK’s “DeliveryCo”

Even the UK, which isn’t in the EU, is following suit. Last month, major UK banks and the Bank of England began building a domestic “backup” payments platform—codenamed DeliveryCo—to ensure the UK economy can function independently of the American duopoly.

What it means for us?

For your work in the kiosk and self-service industry, this is a major shift:

• Hardware Impact: New kiosks in Europe are already beginning to prioritize Account-to-Account (A2A) payments via QR codes and Wero, bypassing traditional card readers to save on swipe fees.

• The “SoftPOS” Shift: There is a massive move toward Android-based SoftPOS that supports these European wallets natively, further reducing the need for expensive, specialized payment hardware.

The Reality Check: Visa and Mastercard aren’t disappearing. They are fighting back by investing billions in European data centers to keep data local and are actually participating in some of these “backup” discussions to remain relevant.

That is the opinion of Gemini.  Let’s ask Anthropic.

The gist of what Gemini told you is directionally right (Europe is clearly pushing for more payment sovereignty), but parts of it are overstated or a bit dramatized.

What’s accurate

• Wero / EPI is real and scaling fast.
  Wero is the consumer brand of the European Payments Initiative, and it has reached on the order of 40–45 million enrolled users by late 2025, with expansion across Germany, France, Belgium and other markets, plus migration of iDEAL in the Netherlands starting 2026. Targets of over 130 million users across interoperable schemes (Wero + national systems) in the next phase are in line with public EPI / EuroPA Alliance material. E‑commerce is already live or rolling out, with POS use planned from 2027.

• Digital euro: Parliament support in Feb 2026.
  The European Parliament did vote in February 2026 to support moving forward with a digital euro, backing a model with both online and offline use and explicitly framing it as important for EU monetary sovereignty and reducing fragmentation in retail payments. This is not issuance yet, but a political green light to keep building toward a 2029-ish launch.

• Strategic vulnerability narrative.
  EU policymakers and MEPs have been explicit that heavy reliance on non‑European (often U.S.) private infrastructures for digital payments is a strategic dependency and a sovereignty risk, and they cite that as a core motivation for Wero/EPI and the digital euro. So the “we don’t want 95–99% of payments on US rails” storyline is consistent with the public discourse, even if exact percentages vary by country and segment.

• UK “DeliveryCo”‑type initiative.
  The UK is indeed working on a domestic payments “backup” rail for card transactions, usually framed as a resilience and sovereignty measure because around 95% of UK card transactions are on Visa/Mastercard systems. It is positioned as redundancy and risk mitigation, not a straight commercial replacement, and is expected to be costly and long‑dated (toward 2030).

Where Gemini is overstating or simplifying

• “Breakup” and “eviction notice” language.
  Public documents describe these moves as building alternative or sovereign rails and reducing single points of failure, not as ejecting Visa/Mastercard. The strategic goal is optionality and local control, not cutting off global schemes.

• Numbers and timing are a bit loose.

  • Gemini’s “48.5 million users as of Feb 2026” is plausible as a forward-looking extrapolation, but published figures talk about 40–43.5 million users around 2025 and early 2026.

  • Wero + national schemes targeting 130M users is in the ballpark of what EPI/EuroPA communicate, but it’s a target as rollouts and integrations progress rather than a done deal today.

  • E‑commerce and POS timelines: sources say e‑commerce live in Germany from late 2025 and rolling out in 2026, with POS payments projected for 2027, not “NFC full EU rollout later this year” as a certainty.

• “Digital euro as of Feb 10, 2026” wording.
  Parliament’s vote is a political endorsement and alignment with the Council’s negotiating stance; it does not mean the digital euro exists as a live instrument yet. Rollout still depends on legislation and ECB decisions.

• UK move: “began building” vs. roadmap.
  UK work on a domestic backup rail and the “DeliveryCo” concept is real, but it’s framed as long‑term, expensive, and challenging, with emphasis on interoperability and resilience rather than quickly displacing Visa/Mastercard.

What this means in practice (for kiosks, etc.)

• Europe is adding strong account‑to‑account and sovereign options (Wero/EPI, digital euro in the future, UK backup), which will increasingly be used alongside cards, especially in e‑commerce, P2P, and potentially POS.

• Visa and Mastercard still own a huge chunk of card volumes and are likely to remain embedded, especially for cross‑border and travel, while also partnering with or integrating into some of these new schemes.

So: Europe hasn’t “turned its back” on Visa/Mastercard, but it has clearly decided it doesn’t want to be almost totally dependent on them and is now executing on serious alternatives. From your kiosk/self‑service perspective, the Gemini answer is conceptually useful, but I’d treat its tone and some specifics as more “op‑ed” than neutral fact.