There’s plenty of ways to pay in 2026, yet card payments remain one of the most reliable defaults for commerce, especially when a retailer wants to sell across borders without having to guess what’s popular in each market. In the euro area, cash is still hanging on, but the trend is clear: card payments made up 39% of in-person transactions (and 45% of the value) in the ECB’s consumer payments study, while cash accounted for 52% of transactions.
The reach of card payments is so wide that Europe is now openly discussing “strategic autonomy” in payments. Piero Cipollone, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, points out that Europe relies heavily on international card schemes: around two-thirds of card-based transactions in the euro area are processed by them, and in 13 out of 20 euro area countries, everyday in-store card payments depend on them completely. That’s a strong signal that card payments are still the most widely accepted and dependable option for retail, travel and cross-border ecommerce. So let’s dig into why card payments keep winning retailer trust and how they enable sales.
Reduced checkout friction
Retail is full of “tiny frictions” and every extra step in checkout is a chance for a customer to vanish: digging for change, a slow terminal, a confusing checkout flow, a declined payment with no plan B. All this can turn into a lost revenue. Card payments reduce those frictions because they are designed for speed and repetition, they keep the flow familiar: enter details, confirm, done. That familiarity matters because customers already have learned what a “normal” checkout feels like, and people tend to trust what they recognise. Modern card payments also fit how people pay today, not how they paid five years ago:
Contactless or “tap and go” for in-store speed, which helps with queues, peak hours, and impulse buys.
Mobile wallets for one-tap checkout and biometric confirmation. Apple Pay and Google Pay ride on card payments, so customers can pay even when they left their physical card at home.
Saved cards for repeat buyers and subscriptions, which adds to the low cognitive load – when customers already know the flow, it shortens decision time at checkout.
Because customers are not asked to switch apps, remember bank details, or navigate a new interface, card payments often translate into fewer abandoned baskets and more happy customers who can pay in their preferred payment method.
Cross-border reach
One of the most underestimated advantages of card payments is how well they support international sales. Many alternative methods are brilliant locally, but regional by design. They can be strong domestically and still struggle when a merchant starts selling abroad.
Typical cross-border obstacles with non-card methods include:
✅ coverage gaps (the method simply is not used in that country);
✅ currency limitations;
✅ regulatory and compliance differences;
✅ extra steps that customers do not trust or recognise.
Card payments, by contrast, are global by default. If a merchant is set up for card payments with proper acquiring, they can sell to customers in dozens of countries without building separate payment setups for each market. Currency conversion, routing, and settlement follow established network frameworks, which keeps operational complexity under control.
This matters even more in ecommerce, digital services, and higher-risk verticals where cross-border demand is often a core revenue driver. For many merchants, card payments are the most realistic way to scale internationally without the payment stack turning into a messy patchwork.
The trust advantage
Card payments come with a dispute management mechanism customers understand. When people worry about delivery problems, cancellations, wrong items, or buying from a merchant they do not know well, the existence of chargebacks can reduce perceived risk. Less perceived risk often means more completed purchases.
Chargebacks are not fun for merchants. They take time, they can cost money, and they can become a headache if they pile up. Yet the system exists for a reason: it creates a shared, widely recognised process for resolving problems, which supports trust in card payments overall. That trust is one of the reasons ecommerce grew the way it did. If you want the trust benefits of card payments without the dispute pain, the goal is simple: prevent the issues that trigger chargebacks and handle the rest consistently. Here’s a few practical tips to reduce chargeback pain:
✅ manage fraud proactively so you are not fighting preventable disputes;
✅ use clear descriptor naming so customers recognise the transaction;
✅ put delivery and refund terms where customers actually read them (for example, checkout and confirmation email);
✅ ship fast and share tracking early;
✅ use 3DS where it fits the risk and customer journey;
✅ respond to disputes quickly, with the right evidence, every time.
Security
Security is part technology, part process, part ecosystem. One reason card payments have stayed dominant is that the ecosystem keeps upgrading itself over time: EMV chip in-store, tokenisation, 3DS for ecommerce, risk scoring and network monitoring. That means merchants don’t need to start from scratch. Card payments come with a built-in security baseline that is already tested at global scale. Roles are also clearly defined across issuers, acquirers, card schemes and merchants, which makes it much easier to manage incidents when something goes wrong. Several layers work together to reduce risk:
Stronger authentication for ecommerce: Tools like 3D Secure add extra verification when needed, helping prevent certain fraud types and clarifying liability in many scenarios.
Tokenisation and digital wallets: Mobile wallets often replace real card numbers with tokens, meaning sensitive data is never fully exposed during the transaction.
Ongoing network monitoring: Card networks constantly update their risk programmes and rules, pushing the entire ecosystem toward better fraud controls over time.
From a customer perspective, card payments feel safer because the most sensitive details are increasingly hidden. Wallet payments rely on device-based tokens rather than card numbers, stolen data is far less useful due to tokenisation, and stronger authentication is triggered only when risk levels justify it.
Are card payments really expensive?
One of the biggest misconceptions about card payments is their cost. In Europe, interchange fees for consumer cards have been capped since 2015 under EU regulation. For most consumer card transactions, interchange is limited to:
💳 0.2% for debit cards
💳 0.3% for credit cards
That does not mean every merchant pays only those numbers overall. Total acceptance cost can include interchange, scheme fees, acquiring and processing fees, plus risk and service layers. Still, the cap matters because it limits one of the largest building blocks behind card payments pricing.
But cash is free, right? Wrong – cash has costs, they just hide in operations:
❌ employee time for counting and reconciling;
❌ bank deposit fees and cash-in-transit handling;
❌ shrinkage and theft risk;
❌ errors and disputes without a clean audit trail;
❌ slower queues at peak times.
So the better question is: what is the all-in cost when you include labour, time, errors, security, and lost sales from “cash-only” friction? In many retail setups, card payments compare far more favourably once you price in those hidden costs.
Data and control
Another reason merchants stick with card payments is data. Card payments generate structured transaction information that helps businesses reconcile faster, spot anomalies, and understand performance across stores, channels, and countries. Used responsibly, that data supports:
✅ cleaner bookkeeping and easier settlement reconciliation;
✅ better fraud pattern detection;
✅ smarter decisions around inventory and timing;
✅clearer visibility across cross-border demand.
All things considered, it’s obvious that card payments continue dominating retail and ecommerce because they do several things at once. They help customers buy quickly, help merchants sell across borders, and provide a dispute framework that supports trust when something breaks. Add Europe’s interchange caps into the picture, and the cost argument becomes much less dramatic than it is often made out to be.
If you are building for growth, card payments are the real sales enabler. PAYSTRAX is a direct acquirer of Visa and Mastercard, and we help merchants set up card payments built for scale, compliance and long-term performance. Contact us today to learn how we can help your business.
