Europe is finally waking up to a dangerous reality: even inside its own borders, trillions of euros still move through foreign-controlled payment empires.
For the European Union, this is about far more than payments. Heavy dependence on large foreign, mainly American, financial companies such as Visa and Mastercard is increasingly seen as a direct threat to European sovereignty. If the systems that carry money, data, trade, communication and energy are controlled elsewhere, Europe’s freedom to act can be constrained from outside.
That is why the EU is now pushing more urgently for sovereignty across multiple fronts: digital infrastructure, chip and industrial production, logistics and supply chains, energy security, and even Europe’s online public sphere, where dependence on foreign social media platforms is also raising concern.
In payments, the problem is especially stark. Around €4.7 trillion in transactions within EU borders still depend heavily on non-European rails, leaving a core function of the European economy exposed to outside influence. In response, Europe is now advancing a two-track strategy.
- The first is Wero, the private-sector initiative backed by major European banks, already rolling out as a homegrown alternative for instant payments and e-commerce.
- The second is the Digital Euro, the ECB-led public project meant to create a digital form of central bank money that could serve as a European monetary anchor in the digital age.
One track is market-driven, the other institutional, but both are aimed at the same goal: making sure Europe can move its own money on its own terms.
The ambitions are far bigger than launching yet another payment app. Wero is expected to expand across more countries, absorb existing national systems, and grow into a truly pan-European network for online, mobile and eventually in-store payments.
The Digital Euro, still in preparation, is being designed as a public fallback and long-term foundation, with possible offline functionality and broad acceptance across the euro area. Together, these projects point to a future in which Europe no longer has to outsource the plumbing of its own economy, but can build a sovereign payments stack that matches the scale of its single market.
The implications are enormous. If Europe succeeds, it will reduce a major strategic vulnerability, strengthen its economic resilience, and gain more control over one of the most essential layers of modern life: the ability to pay, settle and transact without foreign dependency.
The next steps are decisive: scaling Wero faster, finalizing Digital Euro legislation, ensuring interoperability, and turning political urgency into mass adoption. Europe has talked about sovereignty for years. Now it has to build it.
Souces:
- https://europeanbusinessmagazine.com/business/europes-24-trillion-breakup-with-visa-and-mastercard-has-begun/
- https://epicompany.eu/media-insights/wero-announces-launch-ecommerce-in-belgium
- https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/03/05/digital-euro-the-eus-tool-for-payment-sovereignty
- https://epicompany.eu/media-insights/welcome-to-the-new-normal-epi-and-wero-lead-the-way-to-instant-payments-regulation-adoption