[tormeh]

For the neobanks I think it's very easy to explain: Their customers need Visa or Mastercard. No Visa/Mastercard? No retail customers. It's as simple as that. Any other payment scheme is a bonus thing that can be put on the backlog.

[wolvoleo]

That's a chicken/egg problem. It's going to be really easy to circumvent. Just make an EU card provider and mandate that it has to be accepted everywhere in the EU. Then users will want it and a critical mass will be created for vendors outside the EU to accept it as well.

[hocuspocus]

EPI initially wanted to become a card scheme but quickly gave up.

Plastic cards are yesterday's battle, many national schemes exist in large European countries (CB in France, Girocard in Germany, ...) and would be hard to overhaul.

Focusing on mobile payments makes sense. Once a critical mass is reached (Austria, Benelux, France, Germany) there's a clear incentive for other players to work on interoperability, even if the pricing structure might be very different.