3 June 2025: Safeguarding Europe’s Financial Future: The Case for European Card Scheme Leadership

3 June 2025, Brussels – Today, the European Card Payment Association (ECPA) publishes a thought-provoking new white paper titled Safeguarding Europe’s Financial Future, analysing the relevance, importance and growth of European Card Schemes (ECSs) in today’s evolving geo-political landscape. The paper reveals that ECSs process over 31.5 billion transactions in 2024 through more than 263 million cards in circulation, underlining the proven foundations of resilience, cost-effectiveness, and market-specific solutions of local schemes, and their essential role and contribution to European sovereignty. It highlights the urgent need to protect Europe’s payment sovereignty amid geopolitical instability and the growing risk of over-reliance on non-European platforms, calling on policymakers to adopt a comprehensive industrial payments strategy, ensure the availability of at least one EU-based payment method at all times, advance open European standards like CPACE, promote regulatory fairness, and foster infrastructure sharing and cross-border interoperability. ECPA Chairman Juan Carlos Martín emphasises that European Card Schemes continue to grow in both transaction volumes and influence, and that safeguarding this sovereignty is critical for Europe’s financial future. The white paper aligns with the European Commission’s strategic autonomy agenda and follows ECB President Christine Lagarde’s recent call for a “March towards independence” from international payment platforms.