In Sweden there is a single cross-platform payment app since >10 yrs called Swish which all the banks are connected to, and you transfer money by entering the recipients mobile phone number and the amount. No fees and the transfer is instant.
I guess it's luck that some countries happened to get the banks to agree to something like this at the particular time when the technology needed to support it just had matured (in Sweden a government supported e-ID had just become prevalent), and then it's kind of difficult for them to pull out and say "now everybody should pay for it".
Here you can pay with Swish in most stores as well, but the prevalent payment method there is still mastercard/visa I think.
Swish is just another proprietary solution though along with BankID. And BankID basically requires residency in Sweden (and much more), so it's not something you can install while visiting to pay at flea markets. Their only appeal is that they are ubiquitous.
I lived in Sweden as a resident for a period of time (less than the amount you are required to get a personnumber, one of the requirements for BankID) and sometimes not having Swish was a real hassle. Oftentimes it was with smaller mom-and-pop shops whose primary method of accepting payment was Swish. Carrying cash usually solved the problem, but not always. Transferring money to and from friends was also more difficult, either cash or Transferwise were used instead.
Even if I had been able to get a personnumber getting a BankID would have also been a real hassle - by law I believe Swedish banks have to grant me an account if I reside there and have a personnumber but as a US citizen they go out of their way to make it as difficult as possible due to the extremely onerous requirements that US requires foreign bank accounts comply with.
You cannot have BankID without having a personnummer, for which you need to be a resident or citizen (Swish uses BankID for identification for those who are not familiar with it).
Yeah, in Sweden you basically don't exist if you don't have a personnummer, yeah.
I'm a citizen and have a personnummer, but because I'm not a resident I'm not in SPAR. But I need to be neither in SPAR nor a resident for BankID or Swish.
I even managed to pick up a parcel my saying my personnummer, when they couldn't scan it off of my British driving license.
Same in Norway, but product is called Vipps. It's slower to use for payment than contactless (you have to scan a QR-code if paying in shops), but it's so much easier for everything else than bank transfer and much cheaper and easier for pop-up shops than cash and any kind of card reader.
And of course Denmark has MobilePay, which unfortunately is owned by a single bank: Danske Bank. But I guess the other banks are fine with not competing against MobilePay.
That was true but isn't anymore. MobilePay is now part of a Norwegian company, Vipps, which is owned by a consortium of Norwegian banks (65% ownership), Danske Bank (25%), and Finnish OP Financial Group (10%).
I guess it's luck that some countries happened to get the banks to agree to something like this at the particular time when the technology needed to support it just had matured (in Sweden a government supported e-ID had just become prevalent), and then it's kind of difficult for them to pull out and say "now everybody should pay for it".
Here you can pay with Swish in most stores as well, but the prevalent payment method there is still mastercard/visa I think.