(23 July 2007 – Europe) The European Central bank has urged the banking industry to establish a debt card scheme to rival MasterCard’s Maestro.In yet another progress report on European payments, the ECB said it strongly recommended one other European debit card scheme to challenge MasterCard’s monopoly in the Single Euro Payments Area and create more competition between card schemes and banks.
However, the ECB said uncertainty in the market was hampering the transformation of existing domestic schemes and potential new schemes offering a European alternative.
It recommended that a debit card scheme could be completely new scheme, be formed through an alliance between existing national schemes, or be an expansion of an existing national scheme.