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NewsBriefs

This article contains summaries of news stories recently posted under In the United Kingdom, senior banking executives met to
Breaking Industry News on our homepage. For links to these and other discuss creating a domestic alternative to Visa and Mas-
full news stories, please visit www.greensheet.com/breakingnews.php. tercard. The push reflects concerns about dependence on
the two U.S.-based networks, which handle about 95 per-
cent of card transactions in the UK, according to a 2025
report from the country’s Payment Systems Regulator.

European officials said reducing reliance on foreign pay-
ment providers has become increasingly urgent. Martina
Court upholds Illinois interchange prohibition Weimert, CEO of EPI, told Yahoo Finance that Europe re-
mains “highly dependent on international solutions.” Eu-
A federal judge in Chicago upheld an Illinois law that ropean Central Bank President Christine Lagarde echoed
would prohibit interchange fees from being assessed on that concern, noting that nearly two-thirds of eurozone
the sales tax and tip portions of card transactions, reject- card transactions, worth roughly $24 trillion, were routed
ing a key argument from banks and credit unions that the through Visa or Mastercard in 2022.
law conflicts with federal banking regulations.
The effort is part of a broader push for what some leaders
The Interchange Fee Prohibition Act, signed into law in call “payments sovereignty," believing that Visa and Mas-
2024, was originally scheduled to take effect in July 2025. tercard wield outsized influence over global payments
However, the state delayed implementation for a year and have raised fees significantly in recent years. Some
while a legal challenge from the banking industry moved policymakers also point to geopolitical risks, noting that
through federal district court. Banking groups including sanctions against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine ef-
the Illinois Bankers Association, the Illinois Credit Union fectively cut that country off from the networks, raising
League and America’s Credit Unions argued that federal questions about Europe’s vulnerability to similar disrup-
banking law preempted the state measure. tions.

U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Kendall rejected the ar- The centerpiece of Europe’s alternative strategy is Wero.
gument, concluding that interchange fees are set by the Built on the SEPA instant payment system, Wero allows
card networks, not by banks or credit unions. In her rul- users to send money using only a phone number. The
ing, Kendall wrote that the payment card networks “built platform already has more than 47 million users across
this ecosystem” and are responsible for setting the fees, Belgium, France and Germany and has processed over 7.5
undermining claims that federal banking law shields billion euros in transfers.
those charges from state regulation. 10% rate cap would hit card issuers

Merchant groups welcomed the decision. Doug Kantor, hardest, analysis finds
general counsel for the National Association of Conve- A proposed federal cap limiting credit card APRs to 10
nience Stores, said the ruling recognized that Visa and percent would concentrate the impact on a small set of
Mastercard control swipe fees and that states should have card-centric issuers rather than destabilizing U.S. bank-
authority to regulate them. Merchants, he argued, are un- ing, according to a Feb. 13, 2026, analysis by Amberoon
fairly charged interchange fees when they collect sales under its Statum analytics brand. Using fourth quarter
taxes and tips that are ultimately passed on to govern- 2025 FFIEC Call Report data, Amberoon reviewed 4,284
ments and employees. banks and an estimated $620 billion in credit card loans,
with roughly $68 billion of net interest income at risk.
Banking and credit union groups said they intend to ap-
peal the ruling. At least 13 states, including New York, Amberoon’s key finding: only 13 institutions fall into its
Arizona and Georgia, are examining measures to restrict “critical” tier, where modeled yield compression would
interchange fees on certain portions of card transactions. push profitability into negative territory because their
Europe moves to loosen Visa, business models rely heavily on high-yield revolving
Mastercard grip on payments credit. The report describes these as specialist issuers
and names Synchrony, Comenity, Capital One, Barclays
European policymakers and banking leaders are stepping Delaware and American Express Centurion among the
up efforts to reduce the region’s reliance on foreign pay- most exposed. By contrast, Amberoon said 85.3 percent of
ment networks, particularly Visa and Mastercard. Thir- banks in the dataset have zero credit card exposure, leav-
teen countries joined an alliance known as EuroPA to help ing most community and regional banks largely insulated
build a Europe-based payment infrastructure centered on from direct earnings pressure.
Wero, a digital wallet operated by the European Payments
Initiative (EPI). EPI is a consortium of 16 major European Amberoon compared an observed average APR of 20.97%
banks and payment processors. with the proposed 10 percent ceiling, converted the yield
reduction into a projected return-on-assets impact, and
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