Press releases
European payments sovereignty: ensuring complementarity between well-established private solutions and the retail digital euro project
French banks are firmly committed to payments sovereignty, as demonstrated over the past 40 years through substantial investment in sovereign, high-performance and widely used solutions such as the CB card and Wero. The French Banking Federation (FBF) notes the vote held in the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) on the proposed regulation for a retail digital euro, reflecting a political will to strengthen this sovereignty. Its success will depend on effective articulation with payment instruments that have proven highly successful and meet customers’ needs.
Payments sovereignty is already largely ensured in France, which is at the forefront of this issue in Europe. It is built on robust European infrastructures and brands, foremost among them Cartes Bancaires (CB), a cornerstone of day-to-day payments for French consumers, and Wero, a European solution developed by banks to provide a private, pan-European and sovereign alternative in digital payments.
Retail payments are primarily proximity payments: around 95% of transactions in France are domestic. Existing commercial payment solutions already meet consumers’ needs to a very large extent. The future European framework must therefore take this reality into account and preserve the economic balance that enables these European solutions to continue investing, innovating and expanding.
In this context, the FBF calls on public authorities to embed this project within a complementary approach alongside commercial solutions. An inappropriate remuneration model would pose a direct risk to the economic viability of existing sovereign infrastructures and could, paradoxically, weaken European autonomy. Making maximum use of existing infrastructures and standards, supported by genuinely shared governance, would help avoid duplication and disproportionate costs.
The French Banking Federation will continue to contribute to European discussions with a clear objective: to support European sovereignty for the benefit of citizens, merchants and businesses.
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