As the parent comment explains, nearly every electronic money system in Europe uses Visa or Mastercard as a backend, creating a unhealthy duopoly. The free market needs some competition so it can thrive.

I think that’s nearly every credit card system. Many countries have debit card systems that, AFAIK 100% outside of Visa and MasterCard, traditionally work across most banks in the countries, and nowadays work across the Single European Payment Area (28 EU countries plus six others. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area).

But ApplePay is actually more pleasant than both. I can pay with my phone and my watch. It is a faster transaction than both cash and credit, and no need to pull my wallet out.

With one big exception! There are a few places in the city that are starting to only accept credit/applepay/etc., but when their terminals go offline, they’re screwed. I saw this exact thing, for some reason they had no backup system to accept cash. I assume this is a rare issue, but still, I couldn’t believe they couldn’t resort to cash.

To accept cash as a back up you have to have all the items in place to accept it all the time basically. You need the register and to have enough cash on hand to cover giving change plus the accounting and tracking at the end of the day to make sure cash hasn't walked. So if a place has the ability to accept cash intermittently they might as well accept it always.

Has some issues wrt theft (portable pay terminal with boosted nfc signal/antenna) - but certainly convenient.

I used to get cash back at the grocery store. Very easy way to keep the wallet stocked since you're there 1-2x a week