alt Hacker NewsI'm not sure which European country you're talking about, but in France most transaction are now done by card. Yes it's mostly debit cards, but they're still handled almost exclusively by Visa and Mastercard.
Many banks have tried to start other electronic payments independent from those 2 (for example Wero) but it doesn't really get any traction.
So I don't see how the duopoly is any less powerful here.
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Cards and transfers are different things though. What I have seen from Wero (released to the public) are Peer to Peer transfers, so if you don't need to transfer money to a person, Wero will not help you for now.
Some card fees are capped by the EU: https://www.visa.co.uk/about-visa/visa-in-europe/fees-and-in..., quoting "From 9 December 2015, European regulation on interchange fees (Regulation (EU) 2015/751 of the European Parliament and of the European Council of 29 April 2015 on interchange fees for card-based transactions, “the IFR”) imposes interchange fee caps on most product types within the European Economic Area (EEA).".
It is true though that French banks have huge fees even for debit (0.20%) compared to, for example The Netherlands (0.02 eur).
So the doupoly is not as powerful everywhere, but I have no clue why the difference.
I think France is a bit of an exception because there's the CB network[1]. Most cards here are either CB/Mastercard or CB/Visa and a lot of stuff uses CB by default if I understand it correctly. According to their website the network accounts for 65% percent of national transactions[2] but I'm not sure of how to interpret their wording.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CB_Bank_Card_Group
[2] https://www.cartes-bancaires.com/cb/chiffres/