The European Payments Initiative: The next big thing in European payments?

Proposals for a European Card Payment Scheme (ECPS) to supplement the existing European Scheme for Credit Transfers and the SEPA Direct Debit Scheme have been under discussion since before the turn of the century. Since 2020, however, progress has entered a new phase, with banks from five European countries announcing the implementation of the European Payments Initiative (EPI). This paper describes what happened to the ECPS prior to the turn of the millennium and how things have developed since then. It then goes on to analyse the challenges the EPI must overcome to become an ECPS, the success of which would bring a degree of European sovereignty over payments.