Although some interesting initiatives have been taken under the logic of “federating” the national debit card circuits (e.g. EAPS, Payfair, Monnet), by far the most prevalent approach still remains co-branding with the international circuits.
In this context, further gains in efficiency can be sought by separating the governance of the schemes (domestic or international) from payment processing, thus increasing the transparent supply of unbundled services that are not binding upon users and should therefore foster the ability to select the most efficient structure. The integration process is being closely followed by the Eurosystem as payment instrument overseer.