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Europe’s payments sector is entering a decisive new phase. Once built on global networks and shared standards, the market is shifting toward sovereignty, redundancy, and local control. Governments now treat payments as critical national infrastructure, and financial institutions are reassessing long-standing dependencies. The outcome is likely to be a more fragmented landscape where resilience comes at a higher cost and specialised integration becomes essential.
Across Europe, payment infrastructure is being reframed as a matter of national and regional security. The direction is clear: reduce reliance on non-European networks and providers and build credible European alternatives. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde has called for a “march towards independence,” underscoring the urgency of this shift.
For banks, merchants, and operators, the challenge is achieving sovereignty without sacrificing the speed and convenience customers expect. “Disruptions to payment infrastructure can have profound economic impacts,” says Aissam Errami, Chief Product Officer at XPP. “Hosting, infrastructure decisions, and operational resilience are no longer technical details. They are matters of national strategy.”
Deglobalisation in fintech does not mean isolation. It is a shift from global uniformity to regional control. The landscape is moving toward domestic and cross-border schemes with local governance, certification, and region-specific compliance. Markets that once consolidated around a few global rails are now introducing new schemes and regulations, creating greater complexity across the value chain.
“The trend of regions gaining control over sovereign infrastructure, particularly in payments, is here to stay,” says Errami. For payment solution providers, fragmentation means operating across multiple regulatory frameworks while still delivering consistent performance and trust. This raises operational challenges and heightens the need for specialised, in-market expertise.
Maintaining multiple integrations, once seen as unnecessary duplication, has become unavoidable. “While a single interface for payments would be ideal, building and hosting local schemes with different regulations raises difficult questions about cost efficiency and scalability,” says Jesse Stolwijk, Chief Platform Architect at XPP.
To manage risk, many large players are adopting multi-acquirer strategies. The trade-offs are clear: higher costs, more maintenance, and fewer opportunities for scale. In practice, resilience now depends on duplication, and making that duplication efficient requires smarter technology.
Where systems are hosted has become a strategic choice. Migrations from public to private cloud are accelerating, and sovereign or regional options are gaining attention. For critical infrastructure operators, hosting is no longer a purely technical decision. It directly affects resilience, regulatory compliance, ESG commitments, and long-term vendor risk.
The public transport operator market illustrates this clearly: interrupted services create immediate social and economic friction, so payment processing, hosting, and failover plans must meet a higher bar. “At some point, we will need to shift part of our reliance toward regional providers and sovereign platforms,” says Stolwijk. “Whether through full migration or a backup plan, the question is not if, but when.”
The European Payments Initiative is leading the charge with its flagship product Wero. Built on instant account-to-account transfers, Wero offers a European alternative to Visa and Mastercard. Its aim is clear: reduce systemic risk, strengthen sovereignty, and preserve consumer choice.
“This ambition mirrors what we build every day,” says Errami. “By supporting both local and global schemes, XPP enables clients to serve consumers seamlessly while preparing for scenarios where local systems must stand alone.”
Fragmentation not only affects payment teams, it shapes investment priorities, procurement decisions, and technology strategies across entire organisations. Implications include:
“Deglobalisation is one of the main factors fintech companies must consider when shaping their strategic roadmap,” says Errami. “Flexible payment solutions are no longer optional. They are essential.”
As Europe works to safeguard its payment infrastructure, innovation has become the defining factor. Scalable and inclusive technology is essential to manage the growing complexity of multiple schemes and acquirers. “Our mission is to deliver effortless payments regardless of the underlying scheme,” says Errami. “That means giving customers the ability to pay the way they prefer, whether online, in-store, or on the move, while ensuring businesses remain resilient in any geopolitical scenario.”
Innovation, however, is not just about keeping pace with Europe’s payments shift. It is about defining it. XPP’s payment solutions, which include Vayapay, Ginger, and KUARIO, were built for multi-scheme complexity and embrace a strategy geared toward both scalability and sovereignty.
For stakeholders, success will demand both strategic intelligence and operational agility: embracing globalisation today to ensure compliance and functionality, while building local systems that can operate independently when required.
The payments ecosystem is moving into an era where sovereignty and resilience matter as much as speed and convenience. Fragmentation will remain a defining feature, but it also creates space for innovation and stronger regional control. The organisations that thrive will be those that treat payments as strategic infrastructure and invest in flexible platforms that simplify complexity while safeguarding resilience.
For XPP, the priority is helping customers thrive in this new environment by keeping payments effortless, reliable, and secure. Its strategy is to integrate broadly, operate locally, and modernise continuously—ensuring compliance and resilience without ever compromising the end-user experience. By enabling scalable and sovereign payments, XPP is not only supporting customers in a fragmented world but also helping to shape the next chapter of Europe’s payment landscape.
