EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignPaymentsHeadquarters: GR

Cardlink: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Cardlink is a Greek payments company that supplies point-of-sale terminals for card acceptance, alongside an e-commerce checkout, payment links, analytics tools and gift cards. Its terminal range includes Android smart POS devices and self-service terminals. For online integrations the company provides a developer portal. The website also lists a Worldline All-in-One Platform in its offer.

Worldline, a French payments group, acquired a majority of Cardlink in 2021, and the CEO kept a minority stake. The website describes Cardlink as a Worldline brand. Cardlink is therefore a Greek company with a French majority shareholder. The website does not state where its data is hosted. For a European merchant this means a Greek provider within a European group, although the hosting and processing locations are not named.

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Sovereignty score
71 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    EU-only hosting
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-360
    Key management with a European vendor
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-655
    Closed source, runtime with the vendor

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 12, 2026
Headquarters
GR (EU)Verified by hand
Ultimate parent company
FRVerified by hand
Sovereignty model
Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting
EUVerified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
NoVendor-stated
Category
Payments
Type
Product
Website
cardlink.gr ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Cardlink

The European alternatives to Cardlink come from our knowledge base of over 8,000 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

109 European Payments vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with Cardlink

Cardlink is headquartered in GR and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data. The ultimate owner is based in FR, also within Europe.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Cardlink scores best on data residency.

Cardlink is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Cardlink together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Cardlink?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Cardlink include Adyen, Alma and Autopay. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Cardlink?

Our list of EU alternatives to Cardlink is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

Is Cardlink GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Cardlink is headquartered in GR (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes Cardlink an EU-sovereign choice in its own right; the EU alternatives on this page are comparable European tools.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 12, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Digital sovereignty in Payments

Payments: Payment services, payment gateways, online payments and financial transactions. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

Also in this category

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8 European alternatives to Cardlink — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score