ECB President Christine Lagarde has called for Europe to break its dependence on American payment infrastructure, warning that every card transaction sends European consumer data to the United States. A coalition of 16 banks thinks it has the answer.

What’s happening? ECB President Christine Lagarde told Irish radio that Europe needs its own digital payment system “urgely,” warning that virtually all European card and mobile payments currently run through non-European infrastructure controlled by Visa, Mastercard, PayPal or Alipay. Days later, on 2 February, the European Payments Initiative (EPI) and the EuroPA Alliance signed a landmark agreement to build a pan-European interoperable payment network covering 130 million users across 13 countries. The system, built around the digital wallet Wero, aims to let Europeans pay and transfer money across borders without touching a single American network.

The numbers so far are encouraging. Wero already has over 47 million registered users in Belgium, France and Germany, has processed over €7.5 billion in transfers, and counts more than 1,100 member institutions. Retail payments went live in Germany at the end of 2025, with merchants including Lidl, Decathlon, Rossmann and Air Europa already accepting Wero online. France and Belgium follow in 2026. 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.