Comment by Telemakhos

SEPA/SWIFT are not anything like the Visa/Mastercard duopoly: the former are bank-facing, while the latter are retail cusotmer-facing at point-of-sale.

You do indeed have many systems in different countries in the EU. The problem is that they don't interoperate, and the rebooted EPI has had to scale back its goals. Its goal now is to offer a digital wallet and P2P transactions, with a card scheme only in the distant future.