Is There Room for Local Card Schemes in a Visa-Mastercard World?

July 2025

Fintech & Payments

Nick Maynard

VP of Research

The card payments space has been a challenging place to be for many years, as the duopoly of Visa and Mastercard has long since taken a dominant role. While local card schemes have existed for a long time, they have typically not fared well against the leading international schemes. Even card networks such as Discover and American Express have struggled to grow their acceptance to similar levels as Visa and Mastercard; showing the scale of the challenge. 

However, domestic card networks are fighting back, with two new announcements in recent days: a new pan-African card scheme, and a strategic realignment of Dankort.

Pan-African Card Scheme Launches to Harmonise Payments

Unveiled at the 32nd Afreximbank Annual Meetings in Abuja, Nigeria, the PAPSSCARD is designed to be the first Africa-wide card scheme. A joint venture between the African Export-Import Bank, the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) and Mercury Payment Services, PAPSSCARD is designed to help Africa secure its payments sovereignty.

The launch of this service will enable card processing to stay within Africa; creating local economic benefits. The timing and roll-out plans of the new system is unclear, but the system could have a significant impact on the African payments market, particularly as the next few years are set to see a significant increase in banked population, with growth of 44% in the number of banked individuals expected between 2024 and 2030. 

Number of Banked Individuals in Africa & Middle East (m), 2024-2030

Source: Juniper Research

Big Changes for Dankort as Landscape Shifts

Denmark has historically been a very popular market in terms of domestic card payments. Dankort was first issued as a national debit card in 1983, and has had a very important role as a key payment system in use within Denmark. However, its popularity within the payments ecosystem has been slipping, with the Ministry of Business & Industry sharing that while Dankort accounted for nearly 80% of card transactions nine years ago, now it is far closer to 40%.  

This diminished importance is heavily related to the shift towards mobile payments which has been seen in many countries, particularly in Denmark. Where Dankort cards are typically co-branded with Visa or Mastercard, mobile wallets have relied on the international aspects of those cards; diminishing the importance of Dankort’s network over time. Payment system operator Nets has already begun to change this, by working with card issuers to ensure that the Dankort portion of these cards can be used within mobile wallets.

The Danish government’s new deal for Dankort will make several changes:

• Raising the limit on fees so Nets can charge more; funding technological upgrades
• Adding a balance check feature
• Targeting businesses and associations which struggle with high costs of existing payment options

Fundamentally, we believe that the move will make Dankort more competitive; increasing its presence within the digital portion of the market at a time where this progress is sorely needed. However, given that Dankort’s market share has already significantly dropped, reversing this trend will be challenging to achieve. 

Domestic Card Schemes – Backing the Wrong Horse?

There is an extent to which it is surprising that domestic card schemes are a focus on efforts at this stage. Mobile payments have transformed the way payments markets operate across the world, so when trying to gain sovereignty over payments, mobile payments, such as Account-to-Account (A2A) payment schemes, have strong potential. A2A payments have been highly popular, and are seeing massive growth, with our latest research on the topic projecting that the number of A2A transactions for consumers expected to growth by 209% globally between 2024 and 2029, based on our data.

Indeed, the European Payments Initiative has chosen to focus on Wero, a mobile wallet solution, rather than a pan-European card scheme as was originally suggested. A2A payments can also been cost-effective to implement, as they do not require the same fixed infrastructure as card payments do. Visa, Mastercard and many of the other card schemes also do a good job of serving customer needs, so competing effectively with them is not an easy task.

Fundamentally, there is no one size fits all approach in payments. In certain countries, new A2A schemes or domestic card schemes will succeed massively, and in others they will fall flat. Choosing the right solution, based on cultural factors and country-level requirements, will be the key to success. In future, we expect more domestic card schemes to be introduced, but their success will be uncertain in a highly competitive payments landscape.

Nick Maynard is VP of Fintech Market Research at Juniper Research, where he leads analysis on key trends shaping the future of finance. With deep expertise across digital payments and commerce, his recent work includes reports on Chargeback Management, Digital Commerce, and Payment Card Technologies; helping stakeholders stay ahead in a rapidly evolving market.