Speaking on The Pat Kenny Show, Lagarde underscored Europe’s dependence on foreign digital payment infrastructure. “Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and Alipay are all controlled by American or Chinese companies,” she noted, arguing, “We should make sure there is a European offer.”
It’s not in the incumbent oligopoly’s interest to innovate.
I think this is more that American exceptionalism makes them incapable of getting inspiration from other countries, so they end up doing something entirely different. If it’s better, the rest of the world adopts it as well, and if it’s inferior, the rest of the world points and laughs.
E-check is definitely in the point and laugh category, while payment apps based on phone number or email like Venmo are getting copied by various other countries. Granted, I don’t think the US was first with phone-based payments, various developing countries in Africa have had it for ages. But I do think they came up with it independently, because they habitually ignore innovation done anywhere else.