If you want to know why European and especially German banks are at the bottom of the international competition, you just have to look at electronic payment transactions.
While the American top dog PayPal is further expanding its market power, European banks are discussing the financing of the European payment system EPI.
The 30 or so institutes are relieved that they have now been able to agree on the basic framework.
It must be doubted whether this will be a step forward in 2022.
Because by the time this payment system is finally ready for customers, other providers, especially American providers, have long since divided the European market among themselves. This is shown by the Paydirekt payment service that has been painstakingly built up by the German banks and only ekes out a niche existence. Payment transactions are exemplary of the failures of banks, especially in the digital world. But the institutes can no longer afford many failures.
Because the banks are facing a selection process, as the consultants from McKinsey predict in a recent study.
They only count one in ten banks among the future winners.
It is - as of now - unlikely that there will be German addresses among them.
They are too weak to play a formative role in the bank consolidation required by the supervisors of the European Central Bank.