People in the EU DO have credit cards of course. First of all Visa and Master Card, but many banks also have their own that may be allied to a larger company.

The payment systems of many cards however are local to the countries which means you cannot pay abroad, but if it bears a special “Maestro” logo you will be able to take up money from many money machines (ATM?) all over Europe.

The new system that the EU ministers decided to will make it able to DO pay abroad with your local card.
So the banks in Europe must synchronize their systems and perhaps everybody gets a new, maybe more expensive, card.

They did that so that if I want to pay in a supermarket in France I don’t have to go first to a bank to get cash money; We already have the same currency, right?
Instead, I can “swipe” my card just like in Holland with my pinpas at the french cash register and the transaction is completed.
Payments will become more efficient and flexible that way all over the EU.

I think the advantage of a credit card over a cell phone is that it doesn’t use batteries so you don’t have to recharge it every time. And there are lots of people, especially older people, that don’t want to use a cell phone for payments.

Would people in the US want to use their cell phone to pay at the cash register?
We also have experiments with that in Holland.

It’s really interesting all the new things going on around the World with e-commerce, credit cards and banks.

If I understand correctly, in the EU currently people don’t have credit cards? or will they be making a special card for this type of thing?

The banks in Europe must invest in a system that allows all kinds of shops like supermarkets, etc, to let customers pay by swiping their credit card in a uniform system that works in all the countries of the EU.

So it looks they are focusing here on payment by credit card instead of payment by cell phone.

Banks in the Netherlands are also going to reorganize the payments by credit cards (we call that “pinpas”) to make it better affordable for one man shops like butchers, bakeries, etc.

I think in Holland we would like to pay by card instead of cell phone.