Perhaps the most significant decision in this domain is the one taken by the Master Card (under supervision, not to say pressure, of the European Antimonopoly Commission) to cut down cross-border interchange fees down to the zero level, and hence open up a new era in the relations between payment card systems, financial market regulatory authorities, banks and traders in Europe and worldwide.
Besides, the initiative of the European Commission and the European Central Bank to develop a new European payment card system within the implementation of the SEPA agreement (if you’ll permit me to boast a bit, following in the footsteps of our “Dina Card”) and to do so now when VISA and Master Card have already established strong positions for themselves, shows how important payment cards have become for the stability of payments systems, not only from the financial, but also from the social point of view.