I lived in the UK and worked in the Finance Industry there, as well as in a couple of other countries in Europe, and the idea that the UK banking sector is “very competitive […] compared to pretty much any other country” or there not being frequent dodgy behaviours from banks/payment processors is hilariously.

Just look at how a physical payment with one’s debit card (which goes directly to the bank account) can trigger oversized “uncovered overdraft fees” rather than just deny the payment if there are not enough funds like in countries like Portugal and The Netherlands: I literally dumped the first bank I had in the UK when I moved there from The Netherlands exactly because they charged me £30 overdraft fees rather on a payment ON A DEBIT CARD because the because my current acound had £5 less than the amount I was trying to pay (plenty of money on the savings account though) rather than it being rejected as I had been told it would happen when I first got that account and enquired about it.

UK banking is riddles with insane fees for every little possible thing imaginable, from presential payments where the account doesn’t have enough funds (where instead of the payment being denied they charge you money instead) to things like getting a paper bank statement and they’re invariably insanelly more that the actual cost for the bank of it.

Even in my homeland of Portugal, where banking is pretty much a cartel where all the big institutions regularly buy politicians from both main parties, banking is nowhere as slimy and abusive as in Britain. I get the impression you never had a bank account anywhere else if you think banking in the UK is “very competitive” and that the frequency of “dodgy behaviours” is low there, because comparativelly with where I lived and banked elsewhere in Europe, retail banking in the UK is a totally disgraceful leech-filled swamp.

As for the rest, Europe doesn’t have a unified payment processing system but pretty much each country in it has one, whilst in the UK there is no such thing at all and instead mainly Visa is used. As for they’re “working on it”, in my personal experience in Britain it means nothing at all because all the cunts in leadership positions in both Government and Finance over there are liars who regularly get away with it: it ain’t happenning until it actually happens.