I'm not a fan of mobile payments myself but I would say that compared to the US most of Africa's mobile payments are indeed more advanced, yes.
If I understand correctly many poor people in Africa are de facto banked (as long as they have a mobile phone, which has become pretty achievable right now), while a very large proportion of the US poor population is de-facto non-banked, with all the extra financial hardships that that situation entails.
My goodness. American exceptionalism at its very finest. You honestly think that Eurorpean, Asian, and other countries have nothing to offer? Not everything great is from American. We need to get over ourselves and realize that we're not at all that exceptional. Do we do certain things better? Absolutely. Do we do certain things worse and have a lot to learn from others? You can bet your last dollar.
You’re probably correct though, this could never happen in the US because of regulatory capture (by the banks, mostly, but not only).
Comparing consumer payment infrastructure in the US and China, there is really no comparison. For me, in cost, convenience, and security (against the threat models I'm concerned with), China wins on every factor, by significant margins. Except opening a bank account.
A month after I moved to China, I got a fraud notification. From what? It turned out a gas station in Oakland had a skimmer. I'm told stuff like that simply can't happen in China (which I take with a grain of salt, but I have a hard time imagining what fraud vectors there are).
Until the next bubble bursts...what works then is YOU, because YOU pay for too big to fail.
Define "Africa".
Not sure what you mean by this. The quality of life of people in China improved in the past 30 years much more than Americans quality of life did (some would argue that the latter even decreased). The CCP has really worked exceptionally well for the people. It might change, the fact that they don't have a democracy and Xi Jinping removed its own term limits exposes them to the risk of getting stuck with a bad or even terrible leadership. But so far it has worked remarkably well.
The degree to which an economy is "advanced" has more to do with institutional systems and processes, not whether they're using the latest tech. Often times the latest tech papers over institutional deficiencies, but only superficially. Mobile payment platforms have been ubiquitous in Africa for many years, but nobody would say that Africa's banking system is "advanced" or that it's capable of supporting the needs of an advanced financial sector. They became ubiquitous in Africa first precisely because of institutional deficiencies. Mobile payments solved some of the most visible consequences, but by itself it didn't go very far in addressing the underlying problems. Sure, it's easy to pay a vendor for lunch or a pair of sneakers using your phone, but what matters infinitely more is how safe and reliable it is to secure a $2,000,000 LoC to help bring your factory online.
Old systems in older economies persist because they work, or at least work well enough.
If China overtakes the U.S. in technology dominance, it's because they've spent 30 years studying, copying, and improving upon American legal, financial, and business management systems. Notwithstanding the fact that they are serving the interests and demands of the Communist Party, which often puts them in a lose-lose scenario, China's economists and policy advisers understand the systems of modern capitalism better than most of their Western counterparts.