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 European Central 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 network aiming 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.
Europe Is Breaking Up With Visa and Mastercard — and It’s a $24 Trillion Problem
Europe builds Microsoft-alternative ‘Euro-Office’ to reclaim digital sovereignty
Russia still has 'Visa' and 'Mastercard' branded cards, they just use local payment rails instead. Even before 2022 this was the case for local transactions albeit less so.
VISA/MC have advantage that you can use them for foreign transactions, it's widely accepted provided your country isn't sanctioned. So a hybrid approach like what Russia did between 2014-2022 may be good for Europe. Worst case, US sanctions you and you lose ability to do some foreign currency transactions, but Euro and similar transactions work just fine.
But I know its legally and politically difficult in Europe. Even the CBDC plan listed in the article has banks pissed about losing deposits from their balance sheet to the Central Bank (since Digital Euros are central bank liabilities) and fees.
That's why
to prevent too much deposit flight, and btw you won't get paid ECB interest rate with CBDC unlike the banks who hold reserves.
and VISA/MC cards still have two other advantages. i. it's widely accepted worldwide, you can use it for foreign exchange. ii. chargebacks are possible. The latter can be fixed with locally branded cards (eg Russia has Mir) or I suppose CBDC can be made to support it, but does the EU want to?