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Recently the ECB released the yearly Payment Statistics, the 2021 version The PDF can be found here, while the raw date here.

There are several remarkable things to be found and even not to be found:

  • The France processor STET, with their CORE and SEPA.EU systems, seem to be the biggest processor in Europe based on transaction volume.
  • The EBA organization with their STEP2 system is very successful with their direct debit processing. Around 60% of their transactions are direct debits, while direct debit is in Europe only the third payment product in volume.
  • The ECB only seems to have a close eye to the retail systems which process credit transfers and direct debits. However, the processors of European most used payment product, card payments, hardly are mentioned in the overview (like table 16.2). Only a small percentage of the 56 billion card transactions can be traced back.

Remarkable that in the statistics the card processors seems to be missing. Even more so that with the development of the digital euro, the ECB mainly looks to solutions for POS and e-comm. A recent ECB market survey only included merchants on the receiving side and no other groups of creditors. This view is recently also confirmed within the objectives and design principles for the digital euro.

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