I live in Norway.

My kids got a card at around 5, but they are older now. Not with visa/mastercard of course :)

Sounded like Italy. Same exact situation. The interbank payment consortium even created a cashless payment system called “Satispay” that lots of consumers and small retail businesses use on a daily basis.

Hmm in Finland it seems there is "Basic" card. Which I think is technically just more limited VISA debit card. Preventing such things as overdrafts.

Every EU country is required to have laws providing for some level of basic account.

It rarely makes the news and it happens all the time, but usually because people don't see fraud as criminal until it catches up with them.

I'm in the UK, and while regular banks don't generally provide debit cards at low age, providers like Go Henry specializes in accounts for kids with built in parental controls from age 6. They are effectively prepaid visa cards with app access for parents to top up instantly.

With respect to closing accounts, there are extremely few cases where people can be denied a basic account with the largest banks, but most smaller banks are not required to provide a basic account, and other account types can be denied at will, and most people have other accounts types (there are something like 7 million basic accounts).