European Central Bank report finds EU card payments dominated by international schemes and cross-border processors not fully EU-owned

The European Central Bank published a report on card schemes and card payment processors, updating its assessment of Europe’s strategic autonomy in retail payments. It finds that card payments are the EU’s dominant electronic payment method and that the market remains heavily reliant on international card schemes, while processing capacity is concentrated and often exposed to non-EU ownership. The report estimates nearly 70 billion card payments in 2023, representing 54% of all non-cash transactions. In 2022 international card schemes accounted for around 61% of euro area card payments, with national schemes at roughly 39% for transactions issued and acquired within the euro area, while national schemes’ share falls to about 36-37% when including acceptance outside the euro area. Only nine national card schemes are identified as active in the EU, and 13 euro area countries rely entirely on international schemes for all card transactions; where national schemes exist, they face a broader trend of declining domestic market shares. On processing, national central banks reported 111 processing entities across Member States (around 80 excluding subsidiaries), with four major cross-border groups active in multiple countries (Nexi, Adyen, Global Payments and Worldline); none of the publicly listed processors operating across multiple Member States is fully EU-owned, and the United States is the most common non-EU location of processor owners, notably in Germany and Sweden. The analysis is based on an European System of Central Banks consultation covering all 27 national central banks, reflecting market conditions reported on a best-effort basis as at February 2024, and concludes that the observed dependencies reinforce the case for an EU solution at the point of interaction to support operational resilience and strategic autonomy.