Five European payment groups establish Madrid venture to challenge Visa and Mastercard

Joint venture structure and ownership

Five European domestic payment networks officially launched the European Network for Payments (ENP) on 30 September 2026. The new entity operates as a joint venture with equal stakes held by Bancomat in Italy, Bizum in Spain, SIBS-MB WAY in Portugal, Vipps MobilePay in the Nordic region, and the Franco-German EPI Company, operator of Wero. Headquartered in Madrid, the company will establish a common interoperability hub designed to connect existing payment systems across Europe.

The project formalizes a Memorandum of Understanding signed by the five partner organizations in February 2026. Together, the founding networks serve approximately 130 million users across 13 European countries, covering more than 70% of the population of the European Union and Norway. The consortium also encompasses commercial banking institutions backing EPI Company, including BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, BPCE, Crédit Agricole, ING Group, ABN Amro, Rabobank, and payment processors Nexi and Worldline.

Cross-border mechanism and technical rollout

The ENP infrastructure allows consumers and merchants to use their existing domestic payment applications across borders without issuing new payment cards or building a separate consumer brand. Domestic services will retain their original branding, features, and user interfaces while routing transactions through a shared technical layer based on European standards and instant account-to-account payments. For example, a customer using an Italian Bancomat card or application will be able to make payments at a point-of-sale terminal in Barcelona running on Bizum.

Bancomat chief executive Fabrizio Burlando described the operational model for international transactions.

“We want to build for payments the equivalent of what roaming was for mobile telephony.”

“Just as customers can use data across Europe with an Italian SIM card today without doing anything or changing devices, we would like them to be able to do the same tomorrow with the card, app, and other payment tools offered by Bancomat.”

The operational rollout will proceed in phases starting in 2027. Initial services will focus on cross-border person-to-person transfers, followed by expansions into e-commerce checkout systems and physical point-of-sale retail terminals. The network remains open to onboarding additional domestic European payment systems and expanding into European markets that currently lack domestic alternatives to foreign networks.

Strategic independence from US card giants

European policymakers and financial institutions established the initiative to address dependence on foreign payment providers. Visa and Mastercard currently process nearly two-thirds of all card payments within the European Union and account for roughly 90% of global card transactions outside China. Concerns over potential service interruptions or foreign policy constraints, including policy actions from the United States administration, have made payment sovereignty a priority across European capitals.

The private-sector initiative runs alongside regulatory and central banking efforts across the continent. While the European Central Bank works toward a digital euro target date of 2029, national payment providers are deploying interoperability to secure autonomous transaction channels across member states using existing commercial bank infrastructure.