Hopefully, this will become a role model for other countries as well, extracting complete financially power back out of the hands of surveillance capitalism - as privacy is also a big aspect of this (nothing tracks you as confident as your transactions) !
PS: those arguing that then the "state" will be able to see your transactions: a. this wholly depends on the implemented system. I trust democratic and ruled-by-law institutions way more than financial players always operating at the most legal gray to extract most profits. b. I rather want one highly secured state financial database, than 100s of smaller ones that sell (or leak) your data (as it is right now).
PPS: Also a "Apple/Google Wallet" equivalent app mandatory on phone's should be the next logical step to cut those data-harvesters completely out of your private life.
As for privacy - at least in Benelux, there are robust laws in place that make it very difficult to even request payment history from personal accounts.
And generally for the EU, all that regulation around GDPR and other data related directives is at play here by default, so there are multiple layers of protections and guardrails to prevent snoopy corporations or other entities from getting such financial info.
... but you need your Apple or Android phone to use it at all?
Android is open source, except for specifically the bits that anyone who cares about being sovereign in the face of US interests would want to replace anyway.
Also, last I checked the phones themselves are either made by Foxconn, BYD, or a few Taiwanese-owned factories, so while yes Europe has a problem with the physical devices, it's the same problem the US already has.
That's what the bank cards are for, of course; they don't need a phone.
Better to just connect the myriad of instant bank payment systems that already exist all over europe than to invent another standard.
And also it superseeds most of those payment solutions. Wero is based on iDEAL and other european payment systems.
However, this payment system also comes with physical dedicated bank cards that can be used with the new system. There is no need to run an app.
Meanwhile, on my linux PC with full root access, because I am the admin, this somehow isn't an issue. No, attestation is not needed. It never was before, and it still isn't, especially because it is NOT required on systems that have way more chance of being set up insecurely. There's nothing stopping me from viewing the source code of the page. There is nothing stopping me from taking a screenshot. There is nothing stopping me from doing anything. I am root on my machine, and that's ok there. Why is remote attestation required? Why the hell would I even want google to "vouch for me" as a european?
Are you protesting against yet another Orban? How about your accounts in every country of the world are zeroed now? Automatically. Are you protesting against Danish Stazi 2.0 Chat Control? How about all your money are now frozen and you can only spend a few hundred and only for groceriess, as a punishment? Stuff like that will be possible and easy.
Without summoning the decentralized block-based "currency" crowd, I would like to point out that in the entire lifespan of such technologies they never have received widespread institutional or legislative buy-in like this EU initiative to build a digital Euro.
While USDC and BTC have been used as defacto currencies in some countries there is truly no equivalent adoption in any meaningfully mature economic zone such as EU/NA/CN.
I welcome sovereign digital payments initiatives.
Payments aren't and there is no reason for the State to monopolize it. Especially given the EU poor track record on fostering innovation. The EU bureaucrats will "regulate" it to the bone, increasing compliance costs for processors and mass surveillance. We'll be back to the start.
except relying on a foreign actor for the economy is a security risk?
Fiat currency is already a natural monopoly on payments.
Imagine if every time you wanted to pay for a train ride you had to put your money into an envelope, mail it to the United States, and wait for it to come back. That's VISA.
- The EU is not a state, it's a governance body composed of representatives from individual member states. Every state is responsible for implementing their take on the directive.
- "EU poor track record on fostering innovation" - many things you use online have been researched and conceptualised in the EU. Even if they go elsewhere for funding, don't mistake where "innovation" happens and where it gets packaged by VC money for sale and enschitification.
- compliance costs: I think that's only expensive for companies who intend to to sell or otherwise do something shady with user data. Remember, not collecting data makes you instantly compliant with zero cost.
So it only makes sense that digital currency is too.
I think you fail to understand why these are public infrastructure.
Why should water be public infra but food is not?
The main reason why infrastructure of any kind (water, sewage, etc) is a public infrastructure - even in largely privatized economies - is that infrastructure is essentially a natural monopoly. Food on the other hand isn't and it can largely be traded as a commodity (which is, at least in my opinion, a major reason why our food system is so broken).
The water pipes are public infra. They pump it into your house.
The more people that use the same system, the cheaper it can get. Drawing competing systems of water pipes to houses to let companies compete would simply drive up the cost for everyone.
Same with electricity, gas lines, sewage...
Water itself is not publicly owned. You can buy water in the store like food.
Electricity itself is fungible in moment, so electricity can used shared access medium of grid. But similarly it makes little sense to have multiple roads in densely build areas. So both roads and water pipes end up as natural monopolies in build up areas.
European governments govern food supply with cash subsidies to farmers, land use rules helping farmers, special immigration rules for agricultural labourers, special extra-low inheritance taxes for farmers, special subsidies for things like having hedges between fields, special low-tax fuel for farm equipment, different tax rates for different foodstuffs (bread vs cake vs wine vs beer), provision of super cheap water for irrigation, minimum price guarantees with governments buying up over-produced products, special border controls for fresh goods that can't be held up, special border controls for live animals, entire government departments for things like monitoring and controlling the spread of animal disease, rules on precisely what chemicals can be used, rules about things like chemical run-off into waterways, rules about animal welfare, rules about slaughterhouse conditions, rules about package materials, package sizes, package labels, rules about how much pork must be in a sausage for it to be called a pork sausage, rules about who can call their product 'champagne' or 'parmesan'.
If the payments industry was regulated like the food industry, it would be more regulated, not less.
Edit: the EU becoming like 1984 is not what we should be wary of. Our societies becoming like "Brave New World" (control through hedonism instead of straightforward repression) is a much more realistic scenario.
No. That's false. The EU was supposed to bring peace. The EU "single market" is a mean to achieve peace, not a goal in itself.
So yeah, depending on what market your institution is from, you might see an increase in regulation. But changes are, once you expand beyond national borders, you have less regulation to deal with as compared to before the EU.
It may seems that things are not going in the right direction and I'd agree but we are pretty rich compared to the rest of the world, we are in good health, and we are still not at war against each other like we were in the last thousands years so I'll take that.
We had prosperity befote the EC and we can, and did, achieve peace by a mindset shift after two world wars and free trade. There is a big difference between the original EEC and the EU, too.
Again these are all a posteriori arguments that are repeated ad nauseam to justify a federal Europe and to manufacture consent.
But the results are here : we are at peace, and compared to the rest of the world, we are in good health, we live in overall great conditions and we are pretty much free. I'm not saying we don't have to fight to enhance things or to at least keep them like they are. I'm french so I know what it means to protest against basically everything ;)
I'm not saying we couldn't have done it better. But it's important to acknowledge what we really have before trying to get better things.
> I'm french
Me too, so I know that the country entered the EEC without any desire to disappear into a superstate but that's what's happening very insidiously, including because the country has had very weak leadership for decades.
India, with a population 3 times the size of the EU already did this more than half a decade ago.
And it works brilliantly.
The concept is hardly revolutionary within Europe, though. Back in 1996, the Dutch "ChipKnip" was introduced, where you could store a small amount of money directly on a bank card so payment terminals wouldn't need permanent internet access to process payments. This was abandoned when wireless payment technologies were introduced, but the concept has been around for decades.
Like so many fine-working systems, this system only worked within one country. The EU is now trying to solve this problem for every member country, which means convincing banks and financial institutions that whatever reasoning blocked their participation in earlier non-American systems are now no longer a problem.
Why the heck did Thailand manage to create instant payment system that works across Asian countries and European Union did not even finish similar system inside the EU?
Yes we have SEPA payments but these are useless in most payment-to-merchant type of payments across the EU.
We already should have had such system widely used and accepted across the WHOLE UNION.
I am glad we will have something but if I still need a VISA/MC card when I travel abroad ill just be constantly reminded of stupidity and inefficiency of the EU.
Does the Thai payment system work in a German restaurant? Then why should the EU one work in Malaysia?
Can you pay with WeChat in France? Can you pay with CashApp in Ireland?
This is a very silly comment. I for one more than welcome this new payment system.
Instant no fee payments.
It's great Thailand has this, but I still fail to see how EU trying to copy Thailand (for a definition of copying) makes you lose faith in the EU. You would rather not have this no-fee payment system in the EU? How is this at all a negative thing?
>It's great Thailand has this, but I still fail to see how EU trying to copy Thailand (for a definition of copying) makes you lose faith in the EU. You would rather not have this no-fee payment system in the EU? How is this at all a negative thing?
The point is Thailand managed this due to economic, capitalist needs across different countries and cultures.
The EU is a union and did not even manage to do that as well as Thailand.
Literally nothing prevented EU banks (or any other banks) from getting together and implementing this.
> "The merchant will probably say to the customer: ‘please pay by digital euro, or else you pay an extra fee’. Instead of handing over so much money to Mastercard or Visa, they will have the option of our not-for-profit payment engine.”
But it's the EU who with the Payment Systems Directives bans merchants from passing the fees to customers. Annoying how this isn't even mentioned. Public officials should treat us as citizens of a democratic system, not subjects of techocratic bureaucracy to be managed with PR campaigns.
That said, payment system as public service is kinda a no-brainer. Due to the lobbyist capture of EU I don't have too high hopes though.
The ability to have mobile payment without the prying eyes of the American government alone could be a good ad. I'm sure Trump will start another trade war if an ad actually voices that benefit, though.
In theory, merchants can choose not to support certain payment processors. I can imagine a minimum-price supermarket chain like Lidl eventually dropping Visa and Mastercard to cut costs, for instance.
If I had to guess, having subbbed to the EC network, or any of the other country specific ones, merchants would simply get the new one as well automatically.
Similar things are happening with online ID where an EU-wide provider is being rolled out and if you as a service provider need KYC-type ID you integrate only with it. Under the hood the user can use any of the national IDs.
"Digital euro" sounds cute and modern though doesn't it. It'll fool many
If you criticise it you're obviously pro America and pro Visa/MasterCard or pro Russia because you obviously want the EU to fail!! It's clever to bundle it all up in one initiative
- a central bank digital currency, and
- a system for transferring this currency between people and businesses
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht...
It's not clear to me that it replaces Visa/Mastercard. If you have a problem with a vendor and you've paid by card, you have a chargeback as a last resort. Not so with cash or a CBDC.
I don't think I've seen a European debit card that offers charge back. You can often get your money back in case of fraud or timely-reported theft of your bank cards, but it's not easy.
The problem is to standardize all these things built on top of SEPA to work across the UNION.
EU is pro-privatization to the core. Keeping the production of goods and services outside the democratic sphere is arguably the raison d'etre of EU/EEA.
The 3000 euro limit will pose a problem for these businesses, though I suppose you could just take out half a dozen cards and rotate funds.
Care to give a couple of examples?
This is only in the interest of the EU tyrants and absolutely no one else. And it'll cost another few billions
We saw recently that ICC judges were excluded of Visa/Mastercard/... payment system
source: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/11/19/n...
I think a lot of folks in Europe used to think there was some sort of red line America wouldn't cross, preferring to allow its (immensely profitable and dominant) tech companies to stay aloof of short-term "freedom fries" political squabbles. Turns out that's no longer the case, if it ever was.
[1] https://www.thenational.scot/news/25639977.icc-judge-says-us... [2] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/11/19/n...
As much as I'd like to pay in Euros in the UK, I don't think it'll happen.
It's not equivalent to India, or the US.
It'd be more comparable to ASEAN (11) or the Arab league (22).
Yes, but also Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) is a thing already (1). SEPA instant has been live in some places since 2017 (2).
1) https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/retail/sepa/html/index.en.htm...
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area#SEPA...
mau•1h ago