Visa and Mastercard handle nearly half of Europe’s card payments. The digital euro aims to change that

“Payment systems are not neutral; they are instruments of power,” Gilles Boyer, a French member of the European Parliament, said in June. “We Europeans have had many wake-up calls about our dependence on the U.S. We are fully awake now.” That same day, the European Parliament’s economic affairs committee voted 43 to 14 to back the digital euro. The new form of digital central bank currency, proposed by the European Central Bank (ECB), will act as an electronic alternative to the physical money issued by the bank, offering people and businesses in the euro area a free and universally accepted option for making payments. A 12-month pilot is scheduled to start in the second half of 2027, and 36 finance firms, including Deutsche Bank, Revolut, Adyen, and UniCredit, are signed up to participate. Businesses will need to accept digital euros, in-store and online, by 2029. Finance…