SEPA Direct Debit is a thing here in Europe as well, this is why we could live just fine without credit cards for so long. We instead had our local variants of what y'all call ACH and a few cooperation networks, that got unified as part of the EU-wide SEPA rollout (must have been something like 10 years ago). Now you can do money transfers to and from the entirety of the EU between all banks, if you pay a bit extra most banks can actually do real-time nowadays. If someone does direct debit fraud with your account number, you can claw back the money just as easy as you can do with a credit card.
The only problem remains card-based POS transactions... unfortunately, MasterCard and VISA spent shit tons of money into lobbying to make sure people would finally all converge on their standard instead of an established domestic one, their closed network where these fuckers could finally get a chance at getting their cut from the 448 million EU citizens.
The only problem remains card-based POS transactions... unfortunately, MasterCard and VISA spent shit tons of money into lobbying to make sure people would finally all converge on their standard instead of an established domestic one, their closed network where these fuckers could finally get a chance at getting their cut from the 448 million EU citizens.
Fuck MC and VISA.