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.
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.