Now that the US sees the EU as a potential enemy, Europe has moved to ensure its financial system can never be sanctioned or shut down; something the US has done to Russia, Cuba, and Iran.
By late 2025,efforts centered on the Digital Euro,a nonprofit payment system run by the EuropeanCentral Bank (like euro cash). Due by 2030, it would offer lower fees and quickly replace much Visa and Mastercard usage.
While still in development,other solutions arrived sooner. Instant bank-to-bank payments, bypassing cards, are expanding rapidly.
In February, 130 million users across 13 national systems were linked in a Europe-wide networkbaiming to cover all of Europe. Fees are a fraction of Visa/Mastercard, though unlike the Digital Euro, it’s not yet available as a debit card; only online and on phones.
The EU also wants to decouple from US software and is preparing its own alternative to Microsoft Office.
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So remind me why the EU hasn’t started sanctioning and directly opposing the US in its wars and everything lately? Anything that actually hits them, beyond just “we strongly condemn”?
You know why. Or you should at least be able to work it out.
While a lot of countries are rapidly losing patience as Trump becomes more unhinged, everyone is trying to soften the massive shock that is coming. It’s like 8 people sat around a Monopoly board, desperately trying to keep the rabid chimp calm who is player 9. We all suspect he’s going to flip the board and ruin the game for everyone at some point, so we’re all quietly hardening our stores, our connectivity etc so that it causes as little damage as possible.
We’re not going to prod the chimp into flipping the board when we’re still not ready to deal with the fallout.
Still, trying to make Iran the enemy is problematic.
And based on what evidence have you determined that the EU is genuinely reconstructing things behind the scenes and will actually stop being a sycophant for the US?
There’s the credit card and tech shift but I’m skeptical of the EU. There’s little historical precedent that doesn’t suggest they’d support the US (despite some badmouthing), and the German leader/head of the EU shuts down palestinian protests in the name of “freedom of speech”. Zionism.
Did you read anything about the post you commented this on?
Yes
It would have been nice in a way to have a country that deserves as much trust as the US was given for so long. But we never deserved it and trump has obliterated any hope that we ever will deserve that trust ever again. We should expect someone worse than trump. The US has been riddled with corruption and self inflicted social problems and what we’ve seen come fully into the open about that is most people are fine with all of it. People don’t want a better tomorrow for anyone else. They’re prioritized keeping others down; they’ll figure out later how to lift themselves up.
USA has thousand military infrastructures all over europe, don’t fall for the propaganda that USA and europe are enemies, europe is a colony of the US empire and has been since ww2.
You’re a fool if you think that’s evidence of US control over Europe. Those bases are one of the EU’s key points of leverage; so much of America’s global power projection depends on the goodwill of allies, as they’re rapidly learning with the Iran debacle.
Has been, yes. Many gears are in motion to change that.
Still have to see a single gear in the government moving to close US military infrastructures in europe.
Government are digital illiterates. Every single one of them. They see no harm in selling it all to the US. And thyley will. But there are other voices who have slowly started to spread influence and gain traction in the MAGA-era. Change is always slow, but things are happening.
The former government of The Netherlands allowed the hosting of crucial infrastructure to be sold to the US. It cannot be stopped now, apparently, but its starting to look like essential features will be pulled from the deal, before that happens.
https://www.computable.nl/2026/04/03/uitstel-solvinity‑deal-kan-digid-beschermen-tegen-vs‑wetgeving/
I think Europe is thinking too small. With lower fees and faster transaction times, with better protections through instant verification and online-first initiation, these payment systems are light years ahead of Visa and MasterCard, whose systems are still rooted in plastic cards and swipe roller on paper transactions.
American payment systems became huge because they served a need, but they haven’t evolved as fast as the times have. These new systems could largely replace them world-wide.
Yeah, I was surprised to learn that Americans can’t just transfer money - like, when I need to send a friend some money I just transfer it to them on my bank app. It’s instant and very easy. And, I could be wrong, but I think America still uses actual paper cheques. Yeah, things have evolved. Be great if Europe gets this system up and running soon.
It’s weirder than that: cheques are free, but wire transfers are very expensive. Which is really funny, because a cheque is just a very complicated way to set up a wire transfer these days. Someone gets the cheque, it gets scanned, and then the data is used to transfer money from origin to destination account.
Americans do use phone apps, like CashApp, Venmo, or Zelle and the like, adding a layer on top of direct payments.
Wait till you see how China pays for over a decade now. Only QR code or NFC. Since I moved here, I haven’t used cash or card in over 7 years. Everything you need is in one of the 2 super apps. You order food, cars, trains flights, bike share, etc all through the one app. Even the street vendors and few beggars you see, have a QR to scan.
I remember when X was going to be a super app 😂. Wonder what happened there…
That sounds like a nightmare tbh.
It is, I had to give cash to a colleague of mine who would send me money over wechat to be able to get anything done. I hated it.
What’s not to love about some government or corporate parasite being able to render you destitute because they raped your child, you called them a pedophile, and that hurt their feelings, so they designated you a “woke antifascist” on the social credit system…
We have NFC everywhere here, too. I realized the other day it’s been weeks since I’ve had my wallet with the cards in it, with me. Everything is on the phone these days, from an ice cream at the beach to a major appliance.
QR codes I haven’t seen used for payments. I guess they identify the recipient without the need for a payment system?
The USA could use that system for the homeless. Over there, begging yields nothing because nobody has cash on them, either.
The problem with the phone thing is that banks (though not all of them) limit you to two operating system vendors: Google and Apple. Is that better than Visa and MC?
It might be slightly better, in that Visa and MasterCard centralize processing, so that when you are sanctioned, payments stop immediately. Apple or Google can’t do the same thing, since they don’t process payments.
Now, I don’t know how much they are involved in deciding whether the phone itself is trustworthy, which is what the banks rely on to decide whether the phone app can be used.
Visa and MasterCard, whose systems are still rooted in plastic cards and swipe roller on paper transactions.
No that’s only in the USA where you’re decades behind Europe only recently having discovered Chip and PIN that we’ve been using for over 20 years.
We started using chip and pin 10+ years ago. Most use tap now.
Try a road trip through the US. At least where I’ve been, you’d be lucky to find two gas pumps in a row that work with tap payments. A lot don’t even work with chip payments.
Those are the exception not the norm. Pretty much every store including the convenience store part of gas stations will always have tap 95% of the time and you can even prepay inside the gas station convenience store with a card with tap I would assume. I guess if you live in New Jersey you don’t even have to get out of your car to get gas lol.
Palm Trees aren’t trees, btw.
My experience contradicts this. I live in a blue state and would put the percentage of gas pumps that accept tap payments at 15%. Because most of the pumps that support tap have it disabled. You get an error if you even try to use it. Other nearby states seem even worse off. I don’t know where you live that has its shit so well together but it clearly isn’t here
That’s Visa and MasterCard, American companies.
EU government system moving to the digital Euro. Banks saw that this would cut them out of the picture for a large part and were suddenly really engaged with setting up an EU based system of their own to beat the digital euro timeline.
Thanks for the summary. I believe some of the processes have been ongoing for a long while.
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.
Of course this won’t be easy, Wero might not be the perfect solution either etc. etc.
But it’s good to hear that accelaration is happening.Same for the European online Office suite.
PS: TIL that Alipay is a thing in EU 😲
AliPay works only for Chinese citizens overseas. I use AliPay happily in China, but it will not work overseas as I’m a foreigner. Luckily most ATM now accept unionpay which is the Chinese card standard.
Here in the Netherlands, the banks are all switching to Visa from Maestro.
Coincidentally, they’re encouraging people to take on more personal debt. I see the European economy Americanizing rapidly.
I see the European economy Americanizing rapidly.
That’s so sad. As someone born and raised in the US, Europe is so much better than america. What is this cruel joke in which Europe is trying to be more like the US?
One of the virtues of the EU is that it counteracts the balkanization that let people make ignorant statements like “[ part of] Europe is better than [the average part of] America”
If you separate America and Europe into similar-scale subdivisions (local schools, postal codes, sports teams, etc) you’ll find the two areas are broadly scattered on most metrics which aren’t things like “native English speakers”, “uses metric”, or “has a passport.”
“Europe” has a bunch of countries that do some things better than the typical American experience, but there are a lot of things that the USA and it’s internal states do better than the typical European experience.
(For the easiest example, look at trans rights. Some parts of the USA are Iowa and some parts are fiercely transclusive; some parts of Europe are as LGBT friendly as NY and some are TERF island. )
Okay, yeah, there’s left and right in both places, but you at least need to realize that in Europe, even the right wing believes in things like public healthcare, education, and transit. You might still have billionaires, stagnating economic opportunities, and neoliberal politicians doubling down on austerity, but at least you still have work-life balance, PTO, and social safety nets.
Maybe those things are eroding, and maga/kremlin influence is feeding the far-right reactionary populist resurgence, but in general, European politics aren’t beholden to a two-party, first-past-the-post system where one side is far-right and the other is center-right-but-calls-itself-left because actual leftwing politics have been systematically rooted out and destroyed. Most European countries have multiple political parties, running across the entire spectrum, and have proportional representation systems.
You don’t have a dominant culture that valorizes ignorance and cruelty while disparaging empathy and understanding. You don’t have nearly as many shootings, nearly as much police brutality, you don’t have a secret police force terrorizing your most progressive cities. You don’t have bible-belt evangelicals with a deep hold on people’s minds (and wallets).
I’ve spent time in Europe, and I know things aren’t perfect, but believe me when I say they’re still worlds better than things in the US.
Appreciate what you have, and hold onto it. Fight for it if need be, and work to improve it, but don’t throw it away because it isn’t perfect. It can be much, much worse.
Rich people doing rich people things.
Isn’t Maestro still owned by Mastercard?
Yes.
Mastercard Maestro is a brand of debit cards and prepaid cards owned by Mastercard that was introduced in 1991.
yes it is
