Means of payment represent “an essential part of our sovereignty”, believes Emmanuel Macron

President Emmanuel Macron declared this Tuesday that means of payment represented “an essential part of our sovereignty”, in a video broadcast during the summit in Paris of the French payment solution Carte Bancaire, competitor of the American giants Visa and Mastercard.

For the Head of State, “to give up on controlling payments would be to accept that the heart of our transaction depends on actors who are not necessarily aligned with us, who do not necessarily have the same interests,” he explained.

With 77 million cards in circulation, CB is dominant in France, but has been losing momentum in recent years in the face of American giants Visa and Mastercard, and also in the face of the explosion in the number of payments by mobile phone.

“The last mile of economic sovereignty”

The Carte Bancaire economic interest group (EIG) model, created in 1984 and “unique in Europe”, “represents 80% of transactions in our country”, recalled Emmanuel Macron.

The Head of State called on all national and European financial players to “use” this open model which allows collaboration with others, “what we call cobadging in good French”.

The GIE CB, which defines the operating procedures for CB card payments, had asked its members in 2025 to abandon their exclusive partnerships with the American giants Visa and Mastercard. Most banks market so-called “co-badged” cards, Visa and CB or Mastercard and CB, allowing payment through one or the other channel, at the choice of the merchant and the cardholder.

But some of the GIE members market “Visa only” cards, eroding the GIE’s market share for several years. However, payment is “the last kilometer of economic sovereignty”, and mastering it “means mastering the security of our trade, the continuity of our economy, our ability to decide for ourselves and therefore our independence”, insisted President Macron.