Imagine if, back in the early 2000s, Europe had made a different choice. Instead of encouraging integration through regulation alone, we had built a Public Payment Infrastructure in Europe, a truly public scheme. We dared to publicly admit that how money moved was an important matter for Europeans. We could advocate for a shared payment backbone, governed collectively, designed to serve everyone.
Imagining this past that never was isn’t about nostalgia, but more a thought-provoking exercise. Because the question isn’t just why we didn’t do it, but what that decision reveals about how we see payments today in Europe.
It is a bold and provocative topic. Especially in a European payments industry that applauds UPI or Pix abroad, both public infrastructures, but has real struggles to imagine the same idea of public infrastructure at home.
What if payments weren’t a competitive product, but a civic utility like electricity or rail?
Two Decades of Regulation Without a Scheme
Europe has spent two decades regulating retail payments :
- They unified formats (Single Euro Payment Area – SEPA)
- They enforced instant payment at low fees (SEPA Credit Transfer Instant – SCT Inst)
- They capped the interchange
- They granted access to non-bank players (Payment Institutions (PI), Electronic Money Institutions (EMI))
- They designed RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement) systems, roughly saying the rails (TARGET2, TIPS)
- They even proposed a digital euro
But the very simple idea of creating a public scheme is taboo. We never created a scheme: a unified, pan-European framework that defines how retail payments happen, from A to Z. How user experience, customer onboarding, and dispute resolution should be made. Not just the rails where commercial banks exchange money with each other.
I am talking about a real public payment infrastructure owned in Europe, designed in the interest of Europeans.
As a result, Europe remains dependent on private schemes, Visa, Mastercard, and increasingly Big Tech for Retail Payments. We cannot say they are of public interest; they are relying on market-driven logic, sometimes disconnected from the basic needs of Europeans.
Meanwhile, initiatives like the digital euro reinforce the gap. They are designed as a “monetary instrument”, and not as a user-facing scheme. Authorities in Europe assume this position and leave to the market the capacity to organise, as well as the governance. They perpetuate the same credo “No rules. No vision. Just plumbing”, “Just in case” as Mrs Lagarde, governor of the ECB, said in an interview in 2025.
We Know How to Govern Essential Infrastructure. Except Payments
We, Europeans, understand the value of vital public infrastructure. In every essential sector, we accept that competition can exist, but only on top of guaranteed, fair, and publicly governed access. Infrastructure cannot be not just a service. And when it matters, we organise ourselves to protect it.
Take the following examples across sectors:
- Electricity: Member States are the owners of the public Grid. Providers compete to sell electricity but the wires are public, and access is regulated.
- Trains: Infrastructure is funded and coordinated by entities that, in one form or another, remain public. Operators own the trains, not the tracks.
- Water: Pipes are public. Private concessions may manage distribution but with strict obligations and public oversight.
- Roads: Still publicly owned. Even where tolls apply, concessions are granted under public terms, with enforceable obligations.
These systems are not perfect. Their fragmentation can be high. They evolve slowly. But they are governed as public goods.
And one principle remains constant: Access is guaranteed, costs are controlled, and a binding authority can intervene.
Because these systems connect us, and failure or abuse is unacceptable.
In contrast, Payments are coordinated through fragmentation with a total lack of public interoperability. It is considered normal, we do not grant public right of access, a baseline guarantee. No governmental body has the power to impose rules in the name of the public interest.
The Risks Are Real, and Already Visible
Recent events have already exposed how fragile things can be. A major power outage in Spain showed how deeply interconnected digital systems are, and how quickly it can disrupt everyday services.
The same is true for payments. Visa and Mastercard have both experienced service outages in recent years, leaving millions unable to pay. When these gatekeepers falter, there’s no fallback. And there’s no public guarantee.
The Assymetric war danger of Payments infrastructure
Payments “work” in Europe until they don’t. And when they don’t, the lack of public alternatives becomes a systemic risk. Let’s try to picture that :
- A geopolitical crisis that blocks card scheme access
- A platform war where mobile wallets delist certain issuers
- A breakdown in cross-border refunds, fraud handling, or acceptance
Certainly, these aren’t dystopias, they’re real dependencies that shape our lives. They are part of assymetric war strategy, in complement of wars effort, we used assymetrical methods to destabilise our counterpart.
Europeans are particularly exposed to this; we don’t own our own rails, and we have no shared agreement on how the service should be for citizens, besides the systemic infrastructure like the RTGS System. But the “last mile logistics” of payment is not in our hands.
A real logic of winners and losers
Right now, the winners are the gatekeepers, the ones who own schemes, set rules, and monetise access:
- Global card networks
- Big tech wallet providers
- Acquirers and PSPs who shape the experience
The losers, all the users of the service.
- Merchants, especially SMEs, who face fragmented acceptance and opaque fees
- Consumers, with limited choice and poor cross-border continuity
- European institutions, who have no leverage in shaping the future
How can a system be designed to penalise its users? Even the digital euro, which could have shifted the balance, avoids the governance question. It delegates UX, onboarding, and functionality to private PSPs, reinforcing the idea that money must pass through private toll gates.
Public Infrastructure Isn’t Anti-Market. It Enables It
This isn’t about banning the private sector. It’s about designing truly public base layers, a public payment infrastructure in Europe. Europeans would own it, for Europeans. We could let the private sector build on top, like UPI in India or Pix in Brazil. Far from being anti-market, it is pro-access; it creates a level playing field for all actors in the playfield, whether you are big acquirers or small PSPs. Public schemes do not “select” their users; you can access the network as long as you have a licence, and you accept the rules of the game.
Retail payments needs a public scheme, B2B doesn’t
- Retail is messy: hundreds of millions of users, higher risk of fraud, more potential for fragmentation due to the high level of competition between actors
- Trust matters: refunds, disputes, consumer rights
- Fragmentation hurts: no unified rulebook, branding, or access
B2B doesn’t need this: structured invoices, known parties, lower volume. But retail does, especially in a continent of 27 markets, multiple languages, and no default standard.
The Real Barrier Is Political, Not Technical
This part of the story is not a technical barrier; it is a question of political will. Europe had all the tools to act and several windows of opportunity :
- SEPA Initiative became only a syntax
- PSD2 did not structure governance, only access.
- The digital euro could’ve been the UX layer, but it stayed a currency layer.
Legally, nothing stood in the way. The European treaties allow for the creation of shared infrastructure in the public interest, including in finance. The ECB (European Central Bank) could have initiated a scheme like the National Bank of Brazil, or the Reserve Bank of India, with the approval of State Members.
The absence of a public scheme is not a failure of competence, but a real failure of political vision. It is a choice, conscious or not, to leave the foundations of everyday European life to private actors with no public mandate.
Interestingly, today, the status quo remains strong as digital payments become the default, and policymakers retreat behind technocratic arguments. As if building a Public payment infrastructure in Europe was a technical task, not a democratic one. As if coordination, neutrality, and access were things best left to the market. Public infrastructure is never just a matter of efficiency; it is also a matter of democracy.
Each time, the Europeans falls in the same trap again, again. Guaranteeing interoperability without taking ownership. Creating Infrastructure without providing the right experience. Outsourcing the plumbing without deciding policy.
Will Europe Wait for a Crisis to Act?
The ECB’s mandate didn’t help, their main task is efficiency, not direction; national governments deferred. The market will work until an acute crisis surges. In Europe, we tend to move only when we have to, because of a scandal, a failure. However, waiting for a crisis is a poor design principle, especially when such vital infrastructure is concerned.
Asking Europe to ban innovation is stupid, but taking ownership of the foundations will be a big move, and finally admitting that some things, like Retail payments, are too essential to outsource entirely.
So let’s ask again: What if we had built it?
And maybe next time: Why haven’t we?
🧃 This was Iced Tea, a fictional chill for a hot summer.
One idea. Many consequences. No easy answers.
You can read the previous episode, clicking here.
