France still has CB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CB_Bank_Card_Group

There are equivalents in several European countries. The problem is that these networks are national and not European, let alone global.

National banking players did not want to give up their turf. The European Union had to twist their arms to get them to agree to SEPA transfers, instant transfers, etc.

If banking players cannot agree, then regulation (or the threat of regulation) must be used.

Well, yes, but it happens that European directives do happen and are actually followed or enforced.

Without laws there would be no bank in the first place, neither at national or paneuropean level.

The most obvious difference being that unlike China or India, Europe (or the EU) is not a single country. This doesn't make things impossible but certainly complicates them.

Exactly, now that the internet is ubiquitous, none of the problems with replacing credit card companies like VISA are really technical. They are regulatory, they are political, they are social.

And before Trump it wasn't worth the aggravation. It wasn't worth the pushback from the US government.

Trump sure has moved the needle on that! We used to pay protection money to the US via this. Now we don't get the protection, so we don't need to pay.

> one of the problems with replacing credit card companies like VISA are really technical

VISA and Mastercard never resolved major technical problems. It's nothing a bank wouldn't already be able to achieve internally from a technological complexity point of view. They didn't invent any of the technologies, they just navigated the political and regulatory hurdles, then leveraged their position for more.

Your comment makes it look like the problems are "just" political or regulatory. These are more often then not the bigger ones.

Surely the EU could pull off something similar to what India did with their instant payments program? That system seems to have garnered near-universal praise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface

The sensible thing would be to do it by currency area - e.g. the Eurozone.

Technology and some systems could be shared.

Then we could have an international standard to let the national networks work together, like for the phone network.

Yes, common standards would solve the technical problem.

There are also business and regulatory problems with regard to international transactions.

Same with phone networks. Since India got serious about blocking spam, it has some strict requirements to call into the country.

European countries each have their system. But they do not interoperate. You can't pay with blik in Germany, you can't pay with German debit card in Poland.

As jacekm mentioned already (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46963497), Blik has just made a significant step toward interoperability just week ago, see https://www.blik.com/przelewy-na-telefon-w-euro-z-hiszpanii-...