In Europe the last time I saw a cheque was in the early 90's, and they are still used in Canada for things like rent.
I also remember traveling to the states in 2016 with my tap-enabled credit card, blowing people's minds in shops. All their equipment was ready for tap, but no US cards had it yet.
It also surprised me that things like Venmo have a reason to exist! I don't think many Americans know how bad they have it terms of banking tech.
It's still a thing in France, mostly because you can control the moment it's cashed in, it can be used as collateral for rent and so on, and because there's a tradition of paper documentation cheques play into.
But people of my generation rarely bother to get a cheque book at all, bank transfers are just fine.
How bad we have it. Comeon, just stop it.
So five years ago, you still had to enter a pin / swipe, you couldn't just tap. We've got it so bad. So bad! It's the dark ages here, circa five years ago.
> my tap-enabled credit card, blowing people's minds in shops
Yeah right. The iPhone had been around for nearly a decade, but oh wow tapping credit cards to blow minds.
> It also surprised me that things like Venmo have a reason to exist!
Crazy stuff! But like you said, we've got it so bad. An easy to use software service exists to transfer funds, incredible. The suffering. I feel dread just writing this comment and thinking about it.
I just listed some examples, but the frustration was real. Individually all minor inconveniences, but when you are used to a better system it's frustrating.
Top 3 real frustrations are the difficulty of international wires, the frequency I have to visit a branch and how weirdly hard it was in SF to split bills (the last may have changed since 2018).
But sure, first world problems!
And yet you don't know that, as nraynaud and bayart said, the French use checks (about as often as Americans). Checks are definitely a thing in the UK, too. Are France and the UK no longer part of Europe? (If you make a Brexit joke here, as opposed to actually trying to respond to my point, you automatically lose.)
>Top 3 real frustrations are the difficulty of international wires
I will give you this. When I had to send $2000 to a Canadian earlier this year, the cheapest method we found was to do so through Coinbase using Bitcoin; I think the fee was about 1% (for me to purchase the additional Bitcoins I needed; no fee charged by Coinbase for the transfer itself because it was internal).
>the frequency I have to visit a branch
I've been a customer of USAA Bank for years. As it was created to serve the military (although its remit has expanded), USAA has always been designed to work without a local branch. There are many such branchless banks in the US. That said, I have accounts with other, "traditional" banks and they have been about as online as USAA is for years.
>and how weirdly hard it was in SF to split bills (the last may have changed since 2018).
This is one of the things people use Venmo for.
The reason that Venmo is seen as an unusual, and somewhat superfluous concept, is that the functionality is just expected to exist as part of every financial app, either legacy/mainstream bank or trendy new fintech upstart - it's really not anything special enough to require a separate system.