I don’t see why they can’t just piggyback on existing, proven solutions such as Bancontact, Carte Bleu, etc., which are all based on a card running on its own network. If it’s app-based, we’re excluding quite some citizens from it.
I thought Carte Bleue no longer existed?
It makes sense to build upon modern SEPA payment rails and focus on mobile wallets. Europe has always been on the forefront (Swish, Vipps, ...) and we have entire generations of consumers who barely if ever use plastic cards.