Why Doesn’t Europe Launch a ‘EuroCard’?

The way around losing the credit card is you can get cards where they are not tied to any account or debit limit, they simply hold and are good for what ever you put on it, say you go on holiday, you transfer from your bank etc £500 and that is all that can be drawn on the card, if it is stolen or defrauded the maximum that can be lost is the £500 on the card. I know people that use it for online purchases, they put on the amount of the purchase, use the card and that’s it, nothing else can be taken off the card as there is nothing on it.

I have 2 credit card & have never paid one penny in Interest . I pay up in full a week before payment is due .. I still elect to have paper statements & check them on line . About 3 cars back It may have been my Dodge Caliber , I paid the balance , one third cash , one third cheque & the rest on a credit card …then paid that off when due.

I never leave the house without at least £50.00 cash in my pocket !! Its guaranteed to **** me off , if people in the local store have to pay for a packet of chewing gum with a credit card …..Having been a market trader , pub landlord , antiques dealer & used car salesman ….Nothing speaks louder than a nice wad of cash .

If you lose £100 cash thats all its worth . If you lose your credit card , someones out there running up £10,000 with it !!

Read #2 – Visa is already a European company. The ECB is not a commercial bank and in any case the last thing we want is a “Euro” card. The big European based banks are free to start a credit card if they wish. There must be a good reason why they have not. In any case if the EU gets even less bank friendly they will all relocate outside the EU anyway.

Right, just for those who are being deliberately obtuse: :rolleyes:

Why doesn’t the European Union, through the ECB or a conglomeration of European banks, create a European competitor to the American MasterCard and Visa duopoly?

After all, these credit-cards are effectively an additional ‘tax’ on anything that is bought with them.

Because a continent isn’t the same thing as a bank, maybe?

Many many moons ago when I was in the RAF in Germany my bank cheques (Dresdner) were all Eurocheque’s with a Eurocheque card, they were brilliant, you could shop anywhere in Europe and just used to write in the sign for the currency you were paying in at the start of the amount in a little box, they were all loose cheques held in a plastic wallet. The only bad thing was for every transaction they sent you a statement, by the end of the month you would have hundreds of them in the mail slots at work.
You got some odd looks in they UK because unlike Europe they were unusual here, but then again I never had one refused.

Monsieur Vert won’t be happy! :diablo:

We already have a Eurocard; he’s known as Nigel Farage.

Not sure about Mastercard but some years ago the Visa operation was broken down into autonomous divisions with Visa Europe being one of them. It operates as an autonomous publicly quoted company.