A brief look at EuroPay

As a merchant you probably have never seen an Europay card very often, if at all. That should come as no surprise as the card is almost exclusively found in Europe. Today we will take a brief look at the company that is the E in EMV.

Europay International was formed from the merger of two other companies, Eurocard International and Eurocheque International in 1992. Eurocard had been formed in 1964 by a Swedish banker as competition for American Express. A deal with the Interbank Card Association (MasterCard) allowed both company’s cards to be used on each other’s network and eventually led to a joint venture (with Eurocheque) called Maestro International in 1992. Maestro became a part of MasterCard in 2002 via a merger. Eurocard was headquartered in Waterloo, Belgium (yes that Waterloo) and was the dominant credit card used in Northern and Central Europe from the early 1970s until the merger.

Eurocheque was introduced in 1969 as an alternative to traveler’s cheques (or another of American Express’ services) in 14 European countries. Their use as checks was popular in many European countries as the clearing charge was substantially lower than that of domestic banks but despite their domestic popularity in many nations they never achieved the international vision that had been envisioned as they never exceeded more than 5% of the market share. Trouble came as the UK ceased using Eurocheque traveler’s cheques and credit cards in 1983 followed by France in 1989. Eurocheques were popular in many German-speaking countries but had to be accompanied by a cheque guarantee card which was basically a debit card which the company also issued. These were phased out and replaced by Maestro cards following the merger in 1992. In 2001 with the merger with Europay imminent Eurocheque made the decision to stop issuing traveler’s cheques owing to a declining number of merchants that would accept them, the high cost of processing them and the increasingly higher cost of fraud. At its height 32 million cards were in circulation in 20 different European countries. Eurocheque was headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.

Following the 2002 merger the Europay name all but disappeared. The company became known as MasterCard Worldwide and its headquarters remain in Waterloo. The Europay name was taken over by a Swedish bank and some Scandinavian credit cards still use the Europay name but Continental European cards use the MasterCard logo. The cards remain popular in many Central European countries like Germany, Austria and the Netherlands but it has fallen behind Visa in popularity in many Western European countries like France and Spain.