The phone number is the fraud prevention mechanism. In most countries you can't bulk generate a consumer phone number through an API. A Bitcoin "account" on the other hand is just a library call.
Re:Crypto Fund II
by TheColorYellow on Friday May 01, 2020 @05:08AM
(#23040331)
This isn't available across most of the world.
Also would this work if you try going from say, Swedish citizen/bank to German citizen/bank?
Obviously this needs buy in from the respective banks in Germany and Switzerland, but otherwise I don't see why it wouldn't work. It is really just matching accounts with phone numbers and doing a wire transfer. I know there are no fees between Sweden and France or Germany, I assume its the same for Switzerland
If you want the convenience of it being online, here in Sweden we have something called swish, it's essentially a bank transfer initiated by via your phone number. It is free for non business transactions (I actually don't know how it works when used by a business). As far as I know bank transfers are free in most of Europe.