Europe spends billions of euros every year on card payments, almost all of them processed outside European systems. The vast majority of card purchases go through Visa or Mastercard, two US companies that dominate global payments.
For many years, this was considered the price to pay for the efficiency that these US giants offered whenever a card was used to pay for a service or product.
EU leaders now see this dependence as a risk that Europe can no longer ignore, given the possibility that this infrastructure could be turned into a geopolitical weapon.
This is one of the arguments used by the European Central Bank (ECB) as it seeks approval for the digital euro in the European Parliament. The institution led by Christine Lagarde warns that reliance on foreign payment systems leaves Europe exposed to political pressure or sudden disruption.
It is not only Europeans' military security that Donald Trump could throw into chaos at the snap of his fingers. What would happen if, suddenly, the president of the United States switched off all the infrastructure that allows Europeans to pay for their everyday purchases?
