For years, Europe’s payments strategy focused on one objective: speed.
The rollout of instant payments has fundamentally changed how money moves across the continent, turning transfers that once took days into transactions completed within seconds. According to the European Payments Council (EPC), instant payments are now growing by more than 70% annually and are rapidly becoming the market standard.
Yet, during the ABBL conference on the future of European payments, one message emerged repeatedly: the industry’s next transformation will not be about moving money faster, but about making payments smarter, safer and more connected.
From fraud prevention and information sharing to digital identity and the arrival of fintechs in European governance, the discussions revealed an ecosystem quietly preparing its next chapter.
Fraud is becoming Europe’s next collective battle
If one topic dominated the discussions, it was fraud.
For Giorgio Andreoli, Director General of the European Payments Council, Europe is entering what he described as “the age of information”. Verification of Payee, Request to Pay and the upcoming Freda framework all rely on one principle: preventing fraud by allowing payment providers to exchange trusted information before money is transferred.
Claude Meurisse, CEO of LuxHub, brought the operational perspective. While Verification of Payee has been widely adopted, implementation remains uneven, particularly for corporate payments, where authorisation processes differ significantly from retail banking.
Looking ahead, he argued that fraud prevention will increasingly depend on platforms capable of aggregating and analysing data coming from multiple sources – not only banks, but also telecom operators, online platforms and other digital service providers. Regulation provides the framework, he noted, but technology will determine how effective these mechanisms become.
Both speakers agreed on one point: fraudsters continuously adapt. As Europe closes one vulnerability, criminals quickly search for another, making cooperation between payment providers more important than ever.
Europe is quietly building a common digital infrastructure
Another strong takeaway was that Europe is gradually assembling a common digital payments architecture. Sepa is no longer the only building block.
Verification of Payee, Request to Pay, Freda, digital identity, ISO standards and interoperable APIs are progressively forming a broader infrastructure designed not only to process payments but also to authenticate users, exchange trusted information and support future digital services.
Andreoli suggested that these infrastructures could eventually serve purposes extending beyond payments themselves, including cybersecurity and other secure data-sharing services.
Rather than creating isolated projects, Europe is increasingly building interoperable foundations that can evolve over time.
The payments ecosystem is becoming more diverse
The conference also highlighted an institutional shift.
Only a few days before the event, PayPal officially became a member of the European Payments Council, joining other fintech players such as Revolut, Stripe and Banking Circle.
For PayPal, the decision reflects a growing strategic alignment with Europe’s payments agenda. The company wants to contribute directly to future discussions on fraud prevention, digital identity and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and tokenisation.
The company also reminded participants that Europe represents around one fifth of its global customer base and that approximately one third of Sepa transactions involve PayPal, illustrating how deeply non-bank payment providers have become integrated into Europe’s financial landscape.
Andreoli acknowledged that this evolution is also reshaping the EPC itself. Originally created by banks, the organisation now has to reflect a far more diverse ecosystem where fintechs, digital wallets and technology companies all contribute to defining the next generation of European payment standards.
Beyond instant payments
While Europe’s payments debate is often framed around sovereignty and competition with global card networks, the ABBL conference pointed to a quieter but equally significant transformation.Instant payments may have been the first milestone.The next one is building a European ecosystem where trusted data, interoperability and collective intelligence become as essential as the payment itself.In other words, the future of European payments may be defined less by how fast money moves than by how effectively information moves around it.
