Brussels should have a replacement for American Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Chinese Alipay. Just in case.
The head of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, is calling on the European Union to create its own payment infrastructure, which could become an alternative to the dominance of American and Chinese giants such as Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Alipay. She stated this in an interview with the Irish radio Newstalk.
“When you pay by card or phone, even in Europe, you use non-European systems. The entire payment infrastructure is either from the US or from China. We have to change that,” Lagarde stressed.
According to the head of the ECB, the European Union needs to strengthen control over digital payments in order to maintain strategic autonomy not only in the financial sphere, but also in the fields of trade and defense.
Lagarde noted that, despite the fact that the American and Chinese systems work according to EU rules, she still believes that Brussels should “make sure that there is a European offer” – just in case. “You never know,” she said.
Let’s remember that US President Donald Trump has spoken about reparations from Europe. According to him, the EU should pay the US a lot of money – not only for the present, but also for the past.