VISA + Master just work _for now_. Debanking Nicolas Guillou[0] was a financial Greenland.

Short-term negative-sum transactionalists are governing the US. Even if November stabilises things somewhat, the cat is probably out of the bag.

Trust comes on foot, but leaves on horseback. _That_ is why a well-integrated EU-based payment system is needed.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Guillou

Aside from what the other commenter said about the hybrid systems, you proudly state that you have 4 cards at minimum, but having a system that would work continent-wide for ~98% of all money you spend would not bootstrap if someone needed to be bothered with having a separate travel card, which would rest in the drawer or as second Apple/Google/Garmin Pay choice most of the time? Most adults I know have 2+ cards already, it's just that they were issued by Master Card or Visa. American Express and Discover still exist, despite definitely not having worldwide coverage.

We do actually. The German Girocards were, until Maestro ceased to exist, often co-issued as Maestro + Girocard, and global acceptance was pretty good under the Mastercard network.

There are examples of other co-branded national payment systems out there (troy + Discover comes to mind).

If a European payment system (with cards, at a store) is to exist, then visa/mc will still want a piece of the pie by at least playing along to remain as a co-brand and taking their cuts from international payments.

The idea is for the US to not be able to shutdown CC transactions at points of sale in Europe on a whim. All cards in europe are dual-issued under Visa or Mastercard, and under a national card payment processor. In France, that's CB (Carte Bancaire). When you pay in europe, it uses the European network. Outside, it uses Visa/Mastercard.

So sorry, we do definitely get what this entails :)