twelve countries have just decided that much better with Bizum

Bizum has not only conquered the Spanish: now it is who leads the construction of the pan-European payment system that aspires to stand up to VISA and Mastercard.

That is, who aspires to be the face of European sovereignty in payments against the great American solutions. The new company that will coordinate this alliance of national solutions will have its headquarters in Madrid.

Why is it important. Europe moves trillions of euros in daily digital payments and almost all of that infrastructure passes through American hands. That twelve EU countries plus Norway have decided to join, and that they have chosen Spain as their headquarters, is a declaration of geopolitical intentions.

“We want to not depend so much on American solutions,” said Fernando Rodríguez, deputy general director of International Expansion at Bizum. Difficult to explain it more clearly.

The context. The project starts from a previous alliance between Bizum, the Italian Bancomat Pay and the Portuguese SIBS, which was later joined by Blik (Poland and Slovakia) and Vipps MobilePay (Nordic countries).

In parallel, the scheme werodriven by the European Payments Initiativealready operates in Germany, France and Belgium. All of them now converge under a common architecture: a central infrastructure that acts as a “bridge” and guarantees that a user in Oslo can pay a user in Lisbon without any American intervening.

Between the lines. The choice of Madrid has not been automatic. It has been, according to the protagonists themselves, “the first compromise solution” reached between the partners, which says a lot about the difficulty of what is to come. Choosing a venue is the easy part. The shareholder agreement that will determine the governance and distribution of power, the selection of the CEO and the negotiation of a legal process that the parties describe as “long and complex.”

There is an obvious risk: that national interests will strain the alliance. Coordinating 13 countries with different banking cultures and different market sizes is something we have not yet seen in Europe.

Main winner? Bizum. With difference. Their 31 million users They are almost 20% of the total clients of all the allied systems, and that weight has been enough to convert Madrid into its headquarters and place Spain at the center of an initiative that no one would have imagined led from here ten years ago.

We did not see the leap from national payment application to European sovereignty lever.

The big question. Whether this consortium will be able to challenge Visa and Mastercard for real ground depends on whether it manages to go beyond payments between individuals. Electronic commerce and point-of-sale payments, planned for 2027-2028 and what has been achieved so far we have only seen the tip of the icebergoften with walk-around approaches; They are the litmus test of truth: that is where the American networks have their most profitable business and where Europe has been down for decades.

Go deeper. The president of the Spanish Banking Association, Alejandra Kindelán, also has been clear about this: Europe needs to gain autonomy at a time of rising geopolitical upheaval.

Payments, in this context, have ceased to be the usual infrastructure and have become a matter of sovereignty. And dependence on American networks is increasingly seen in Europe as a problem to be solved.

Featured image | Xataka with Mockuuups Studio

In Xataka | Europe seeks its sovereignty in rare earths and knows how to achieve it the fast way: with a supermine in Sweden