European Court of Auditors – Digital Payments in the EU, 2025

The report assesses the progress in digital payments within the EU, focusing on their safety, speed, and cost, while identifying remaining gaps in these areas.

The EU has made progress in developing a regulatory framework for digital payments, yet gaps remain in pricing regulation and open banking. There is a lack of standardization and weak monitoring in open banking. Deficiencies in monitoring and data collection hinder the assessment of the impact of digital payment policies. The EU Commission has implemented most actions from the 2020 retail payments strategy, but delays were frequent, and goals were not always achieved. Actions on customer authentication have made payments safer, but challenges remain. Discrimination based on the location of the payment account persists. A level playing field for business oversight in the EU has not been achieved.