Originally published in Respekt.

These days, few people lack at least one payment card. The vast majority operate on Visa or Mastercard networks. Consequently, when making purchases in stores or online with a card, users are almost certainly engaging one of these American enterprises.

Visa and Mastercard function as international networks that facilitate transactions between the cardholder's bank and the merchant's bank. They deliver rapid and secure processing - relaying data between institutions, validating deals, defining protocols for foreign currency payments, and executing conversions via their established exchange rates.

These firms manage over half of Europe's card transactions - their prevalence has made much of the region reliant on them. Such dependency, though, is hardly unique to this sector.

Following Donald Trump's return to the U.S. presidency, European countries - unsettled by his combative approach - have intensified efforts to diminish reliance on American businesses.

This drive extends logically to payment infrastructures and comparable domains, centering on strategies to methodically displace major U.S. entities from digital payment channels.

European digital wallet

The European Central Bank (ECB) has repeatedly highlighted how dependence on overseas card networks leaves Europe susceptible to political leverage or unexpected outages.

In the wake of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Visa and Mastercard promptly disconnected Russia from the worldwide payment infrastructure. This episode underscores risks that go well beyond the strategic defenses of European nations.