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As Europe's proposed alternative to Visa and Mastercard takes shape, evidence from Russia suggests that an upstart rival can break the American giants' duopoly - if government is prepared to put its finger on the scale.
The European Central Bank has long-floated the idea of a home-grown cross-border scheme capable of taking on Visa and Mastercard. Last year, a host of the continent's banks finally unveiled plans to take action through the European Payments Initiative (EPI), which promises a unified pan-European payment system, offering a card for consumers and merchants across Europe, a digital wallet and P2P payments. While the task of eating into Visa and Mastercard's dominance is daunting, figures from Russia show that it is possible. Russia set up the Mir national payments card network in late 2015 at the behest of President Vladimir Putin in response to US and EU sanctions over the annexation of Crimea, which saw MasterCard and Visa cut off services to several of the country's banks.
https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/38166/mir-breaks-visa-mastercard-duopoly-in-russia
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