Do you realize that even here on HN, the percentage of people who know at least one of those names is likely to be in low single digits?
Compared to Google or Meta or Apple or Microsoft, these are not successes. And yet, France with its relatively big population and relatively good schools, should theoretically produce at least one or two comparable companies.
Specializing in a niche corner of the market can be called a success, but a cunning dwarf is still a dwarf. For one, it lacks the necessary capital to invest into something more risky but potentially more rewarding.
That the US by itself forms an easily accessible largely single-language market is one of the reasons they do disproportionately well.
And that's fine because those companies are serving the French market first? I don't expect French people to know about Zelle or Konbini payments.
It is certainly not bad, but it makes no sense to pretend that they play in the same league as the global giants, or even just one level under them.
At this level of significance, countries like Thailand or Turkey can play, too. I would expect more from France, one of the heavyweights of the Western civilization and a cradle of Enlightement.
I say this as an avid Zelle user.
It's telling that you're lumping France and Germany together that you don't know what you're talking about. France has come an extremely long way in the past few years, with pretty good mobile and fibre coverage (there are villages with hundreds of people with proud signs "Commune fibrée"), and vast government digital services. The last time i had to interact with a government office physically was to file the (online prepared) form for ID and passport, where it's purely done for verification purposes. There's a government SSO which gives access to all government services online, for free.
There's also a very healthy startup culture and scene (check the FrenchTech's Next40).
> Entire huge countries such as France and Italy produce basically nothing of value when it comes to tech
Insulting to companies such as Doctolib (revolutionised health appointments, a single platform to book one, send your documents if needed, have ones online, etc.), Back Market, fintechs such as Qonto and Swile, Ornikar, etc. etc. Real world companies solving actual problems and widely used in France and starting to export (Back Market have an EU wide presence, Ornikar are in a couple of Western EU markets, etc.).