"It didn’t go unnoticed in Frankfurt that Visa and Mastercard suspended operations in Russia in March 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine……Thirteen of the 20 countries in the euro have no domestic card scheme. You use an international operator, or you pay in cash."
It hasn't gone unnoticed that the US is threatening to invade an EU country's (Denmark) territory, either. Would a future President Trump or President Vance threaten to shut down European financial infrastructure if it opposes an annexation of Greenland? Who knows, but better to take away that opportunity for leverage.
The plan is that you can link it to your bank account or open a special account at post offices throughout the EU. There will be phone apps for payments and digital Euro debit cards. Visa/Mastercard & Apple/Google Pay typically charge 3% fees; the digital Euro will have none. That will ensure it is speedily adopted by retailers and quickly supplants the US providers. Also worth noting its technology will be 100% European only, leaving zero vulnerability/leverage to non-Europeans.
Digital euro: what it is and how we will use the new form of cash - The European Central Bank is determined to break the US grip on card payments
Payment by bank transfers doesn't at all work like credit card payments since you don't give them some kind of information which they can then use to get the money from you.
Instead THEY give you their bank details and you order your bank to transfer money to their account (a process made ever more easy over time and pretty straightforward now with smartphone bank apps which can read QR codes with their bank info).
At most they might get the number of the account the money was transferred from and no further information about it, the kind of information that, if leaked, is pretty much useless (can't be used to get info on who owns that account or how much money is there, much less to get money out from that account).
Maybe some countries have really bad security and secrecy laws around bank accounts, but in those countries in Europe I lived in, the only one where that is maybe the case is Britain, whilst in the rest knowing somebody's bank account number is useless.
The really risky stuff is Debit Cards which are directly linked to your bank account (for example VISA Electron) as those have none of the protections of Credit Cards and do have card data which can be used for distance purchases and hence if leaked would allow access to your accounts. Electronic bank transfers are something completely different from this.
As I understand it, and in the US at least, debit card protections have caught up with credit cards.
This is mostly true, with the caveat that the money is still missing from your bank account until customer service agrees with you about the fraud and issues you a refund, vs. a credit card where the money is missing from the card issuer’s bank account instead.