There are basically easy bank transfers in the U.K. which are almost always very fast but they aren’t used for most payments. You’d use them to transfer between friends/family and paying for something like rent (with a standing order) or moving money between accounts.

While the payments industry (ie Mastercard/Visa) is a big one, they do actually provide a service. The cards allow people to buy things on credit (so stores can let people buy things on credit without needing their own collections departments or taking on default risk) and they provide various consumer protection mechanisms (which consumers want even if they won’t care about buying things on credit and paying back the loan over a long time).

It also isn’t obvious to me that this market won’t see disruption. There are a lot of BNPL firms trying to get in on it, for example.