The First Data / EUIFSERV announcement caught my eye because it was only a couple of weeks ago that the Commission was (again) moaning about banks switching to Visa and MasterCard instead of creating a new European “third way”, a Euro version of Switch, Laser, MisterCash and all of the other domestic schemes that are vanishing under SEPA pressure…
EU internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy said payment card providers must not use the single European payments area (SEPA) as an excuse to replace national card payment schemes with more expensive ones.
[From EU’s McCreevy tells payment card cos not to use SEPA as excuse for price rises – Forbes.com]
You’ll recall, of course, that a few months ago
the Euro-Alliance of Payment Schemes (EAPS) has been set up to explore ways of linking existing national debit card schemes into a pan-European network
[From Digital Money Forum: Changes to the card payments landscape in Europe]
EUFISERV was one of the six founding members of EAPS.
These opinions are my own (I think) and presented solely in my capacity as an interested member of the general public [posted with ecto]