This week a review commissioned by the British government said that the UK should undertake to form a “digital alternative” which would be capable of challenging the market dominance of US credit card companies Visa and Mastercard.

The review noted, “While cards make a tremendous contribution to the payments landscape, we heard notable dissatisfaction with the cost of card schemes on the part of shops, services, and other merchants – which may be in part due to a lack of choice or digital alternatives to the existing card schemes.”

The report the review produced, called the “Future of Payments Review,” concluded that there has been a long-standing dissatisfaction across the European Union over the forced reliance on American card payment services. However the report noted that despite repeated calls to form a regionally-based “home grown” alternative, several attempts to form such an entity have made almost no progress.

The report concluded the payment sector in Britain needed to increase the use of open banking technology to bypass traditional money transfer methods which rely on the entry of sort codes and account numbers by customers.

The report said, “We believe the market would be further improved if there was a viable digital alternative to the card schemes.”

The leader of the review, Joe Garner, noted that merchants and retailers complained of feeling “trapped” within the current technological framework. Garner said that as the use of cash declines, offering retailers the option to charge payments without the need for a card network would make the market “healthier.”