This is a gross, unjustified generalization. Sure, there's a lot of old crap around, but that's no different from other parts of the world; but there's also lots of new, modern stuff, with a huge diversity across the continent.
Just to give a common counterexample, the SEPA system allows me to trivially transmit money to anyone in the eurozone, for a considerable portion of them (including everyone in my country) in seconds, completely free of charge and involvement of any third party except my and their bank. Cash App, Venmo and comparable services basically don't exist in the EU, because the governments stimulated and mandated large scale interoperable digital infrastructure.
Paying on credit card in the US was painful compared to the experience in Australia a few years ago. Australia had tap-to-pay everywhere and so many places in the US were still requiring swipe and signature (I mean WTF).
I have found SEPA to be quite good. Australia has PayID as well which works well.
To cherry-pick, Estonia is leading the world when it comes to digital government. It has been an absolute pleasure to use their e-resident system to run a company. They're fostering a startup ecosystem that is punching well above it's weight[0]. From autonomous delivery robots[1] to Wise.
Government technology can often lag behind private sector technology, both from an inately conservative approach, but also because they have to care about things that often get ignored with private sector tech, like supporting everyone (e.g. robust accessibility).
But to say that Europe is 20-30 years behind is just not a realistic view of the world.
[0]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/estonia-has-just-1-3-million-p... [1]: https://estonia.ee/delivery-robots-created-by-estonian-engin...
The truth is that 20-30 years ago Europe was lagging behind the US in some respects - credit card acceptance, computer usage in some businesses, etc. But obviously they're on par with the US today, and where they're ahead or behind the US the reason isn't access to technology, rather it's usually government policy.
Government policy and societal attitude are two parts of the reason. It's not really fair to compare US and Estonia really, One is managing 350(?) million people and the other 1.3 million. Even comparing Australia to Estonia though, the differences in behaviour from the government entities are remarkable.
Australia has a real "we're going to catch you" vibe to it's taxation and social services, where as, Estonia seems to really have an attitude of trying to build awesome things to make their citizens better off and to streamline things.
Governments and their relationship to technology, both as a provider and also as a regulator is a complex beast. As you say, so many of the problems are manifestations in the imperfections of our democracies. Regardless of which AU, EU, GB, US all have flaws that we have to live with and work to improve.
Banks might also have only implemented receiver or sending, but not both. My mom can receive my instant SEPA transfers, but she can't send me one back since her bank has only implemented the receiving part.
- Government issued MFA/SSO solution (nemid, now mitid)
- Online tax filing
- Drivers License/Health Card apps
- Secure communications platform (e-boks) for official messages
And thats just off the top of my head. The likelihood that the US catches up to this in any meaningful way is slim to none.
I do agree that the 20-30 years behind is a gross overestimation, but acting like we're a shining example of modern IT is a stretch as well.
[1] https://www.version2.dk/artikel/eksperter-saar-tvivl-om-sikk...
Happy Wise customer, Happy Xolo customer. I love Bolt (when available).
Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.