What should be done to improve the autonomy of European retail payments?

Abstract

Europe needs its own means of retail payment and more competition. Although national payment solutions have emerged in many European countries, in Finland in-store payments rely almost entirely on international card payments. Both the Eurosystem and the European Commission strongly support the promotion of account-to-account payment methods as alternatives to card payments. The Eurosystem’s digital euro project, in turn, represents a different approach to addressing the same challenges.