Well, that's because with the EU there is a law to allow any citizen from any participating country to receive a salary/payment. to any EU-based bank.

So you do need SEPA normalization; otherwise that can't work. It's hardly a problem, and the fact that it required a regulation just shows how ineffective governments are in practice.

Fintech banks came up with an easier-to-use, more efficient, and more convenient system in less time than it took them to do this. And they manage to be cheaper.

The problem with banks is entirely regulation related; they are established players, working with/for the government, and basically get rewarded for stealing. Once I had a problem with my legacy bank, who robbed me of over 1k euros because they were generating 150-euro letters to tell me they refused a government tax debit for a lack of provision (mind you, the rejected amount was 50 euros, less than a third of their fee for rejecting it).

As far as I'm concerned, banks are legal criminals, enabled by the even bigger criminals running governments.