ECB President Christine Lagarde has pushed for Europe to establish its own digital payment system to reduce reliance on American companies like Visa and Mastercard. Currently, these companies process about $24 trillion in transactions annually, and their infrastructure handles most European card and mobile payments. This dependence raises concerns about data privacy, as consumers' transaction information leaves the EU every time they make a purchase. In response, the European Payments Initiative (EPI) and the EuroPA Alliance recently agreed to create a pan-European interoperable payment network called Wero, which will allow users to make payments across borders without involving American networks. Wero is designed to streamline transactions by enabling payments via phone numbers instead of traditional banking details. Launched in July 2024, it already has 47 million registered users in Belgium, France, and Germany and has processed over €7.5 billion in transactions. The agreement with the EuroPA Alliance connects approximately 130 million users across 13 countries, covering about 72% of the EU and Norway's population. The project aims to launch cross-border peer-to-peer payments this year, with plans for e-commerce and point-of-sale payments to follow in 2027. Previous efforts to create a unified European payment system have failed due to fragmentation and competition among national solutions. The Monnet Project and earlier versions of the EPI struggled to gain traction because different countries developed their own systems that couldn’t interact. The challenge remains to convince consumers and merchants to shift away from established players like Visa and Mastercard, which will likely resist these changes. While the EPI estimates that several billion euros are needed for a viable alternative, the political climate now favors a push for European payment sovereignty, reflecting broader goals of strategic autonomy in various sectors.