Same fraud systems monitor credit cards except in the American case you get at worst 1% cash back so 1% off the purchase price of everything and if something does happen, and regardless of protections fraud still occurs, it’s the bank’s money that is gone and not yours.

Separately the EU is a large collection of states and each one has its varying levels of participation and sophistication with payment processing. Apple and Google Pay are both widely used and that won’t change, and by and large there’s no good reason for Europeans to not accept American credit cards so they’ll continue to do so.

Anyone telling you differently either doesn’t have the slightest idea what they’re talking about or they’re just caught up in a pointless anti-American fervor. Even in countries such as France American Express is accepted in more places.

Accepting cards from US-controlled schemes is not an issue at all. The geopolitical issue is not having any alternative, and these US schemes being the only way to pay even in domestic transactions.

Almost nobody considered this a problem until a few years ago, but the relevant EU stakeholders got pretty rattled recently [1], and my prediction is that this particular bell can't be un-rung.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/feb/18/international-cr...