Green Paper – Towards an integrated European market for card, internet and mobile payments

Secure, efficient, competitive and innovative electronic payments are crucial if consumers, retailers and companies are to enjoy the full benefits of the Single Market, and increasingly so as the world moves beyond bricks-and-mortar trade towards e-commerce.

The way goods and services are purchased in Europe is fundamentally changing. As EU citizens and businesses become increasingly active outside their country of origin, electronic payments that work smoothly across borders significantly facilitate their daily lives.

Building on achievements in the field of retail payments, Europe has an opportunity to be at the cutting edge of what ‘making a payment’ could mean in the future, be it with a payment card, on the internet or by using a mobile phone.

This Green Paper assesses the current landscape of card, internet and mobile payments in Europe, identifies the gaps between the current situation and the vision of a fully integrated payments market and the barriers which have created these gaps.

The objective of the Green Paper is to launch a broad-scale consultation process with stakeholders to validate or contribute to the Commission’s analysis and to help identify the right way to improve market integration.

• Primary Source

EUR-Lex: COM(2011)941: Follow the progress of this document through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2011:941:FIN

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