If the eurozone could get rid of all their currencies, they can shelve their independent internal payment systems and standardize on one.
this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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I think it's positive to have them opt-in to a common payment system on top of any national system they might currently have. Redundancy (and the possibility to leave, though potentially crippling) is politically attractive to many.
Ideally they drift toward consensus by skimming the best protocols, but it also permits incremental development where e.g. a smaller system might nominate itself as a test-bed for a specific feature, or bounties for external firms to compete over simultaneously.
When I lived in Japan about 20 years ago, I remember being surprised that the only widely accepted credit card was American Express.
At a large company I was paid in cash, delivered weekly in an envelope by a HR gentleman. While it wasn't the most efficient system, I skipped back to my company home every week feeling like a millionaire.