In Europe, cards have become the most used payment instrument, with over 15 billion payments per year. The use of cheques, on the other hand, has decreased by 5% in the European Union and by 6.4% in the United States. We notice a clear trend towards cashless payments in many countries, including the EU Member States and the United States.
However, despite similar trends at a global level, national payment habits still differ. Indeed, this is the case in the EU, which makes it is a real challenge for the industry to develop common solutions that are capable of coping with the different payment habits in Europe. The newly developed solutions should also give users similar choices between payment services between Member States.