2026-07-08 08:18 UTC
Payment processors are another huge area of reliance.
Visa and Mastercard dominate European card payments: 13 eurozone countries route over 96% of their card transactions through them. For the UK this rises to 98% – a duopoly.
European counterparts struggle to capture their domestic market. Several EU members have created national card schemes that work domestically, but rely on third-party processors internationally.
Wero has been launched as a pan-European alternative
Replies (1)
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@rafa_font@mastodon.online 2026-07-08 08:24
The defining technological race is for AI, and here the capital gap is starkest Did you know that the lead AI company in 2014 was European? It was DeepMind - now property of Google. This is an American corporation benefiting from European talent that struggled to scale effectively at home This dependence is politically contingent. Washington can switch off access to US technologies overnight. In June 2026, foreign nationals were barred from accessing Anthropic’s most powerful models