"Major European Payment Processor" really just translates to "Major European Incompetence Center".
However, I've also worked at a financial institution which used core systems by Harland Financial Systems. Their "encryption" for data in transit from teller workstations to the core system was just a two byte XOR, and they sent the key at the beginning of the connection!
Was so unbelievable to be able to crack this in under a half-hour after noticing patterns in a PCAP. Wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.
That fraud was good enough for our regulators and theirs, so I have no doubt the industry is filled with rotten incompetence through and through.
It's amazing that society even functions at all.
Do Europe financial institutions have the same level of corruption as the USA? Such as a credit card company authorizing credit card transactions with incorrect expiration date to maximum profit, Bank of America? Or opening new accounts without consumer consent, Wells Fargo?
Incompetence and corruption only slightly overlap in most cases, i.e., being competent at corruption is a very real thing. The incompetently corrupt, usually end up punished... and there are few and far between...as we all very well know.
The kind of schemes you mentioned are generally not going to be how "corruption" will manifest itself in European financial institutions, because although it is also difficult to speak in general across Europe since the EU has not yet subsumed democratic self-determination all across the continent yet, so there is wide variation; the competent corruption is largely in the form of money laundering and tax evasion, not lower level quantitative schemes that would quickly come to light because Europeans are also a lot more cognizant of money and value than Americans, so people are paying attention a lot more closely and will raise hell over a single cent, where Americans are known to have hundreds of dollars draining out of their pockets every month just alone on recurring payments for things they don't even use anymore and don't bother dealing with it.
What we all don't really seem to internalize as a human species, is the absolutely demonic type of pernicious nature of "banking", i.e., a kind of LotR, ring, that consumes you especially if you are weak... and human, or at least European civilization seems to frequently go through periods of immense weakness where things are going springily and everyone is dancing to the music the "bankers" are playing as they are pandering our pockets, and when they realize they could get away with that and all the pockets are plundered, they move on to plundering our homes, then our accounts, then they want to take our first born... "Banking" is like humanity's cocaine, the seemingly innocuous, feel good drug that will consume your soul if you do not rage and fight against that demon taking over aggressively. It's no coincidence that cocaine is so widely used by the most parasitic elements of European societies, especially in "banking"/finance in general.
it differs by country (EU gives countries some similar overlapping laws, but they still are distinct countries with a lot of different practices and different laws in many many ways.)
and it differs by severity
E.g. deutsche bank has become notorious to appear in most large scale bank scandals _in the US_ as a "German Representative". They also repeatedly get into trouble for relations to money laundering operations and other issues. At the same time they are the Bank which has to give you a (expensive but not completely absurd priced) bank account no matter your credit score, criminal history etc. and is the bank you mostly likely have a escrow account parking money if the person who gets it "if you mess up" is the state/local government (like e.g. in some long term visa context).
In general banks move very slow, including with software protocol updates/changes. And that isn't just the case in the EU AFIK. Actually some of the most crazy cases of "old software" I have seen in "the west" where as far as I remember in the UK and the issue was that it was deeply fundamentally impossible for them handle a lot of non English names correctly, like in 2017~2020 or so. Through at least they still could use the bank, just with a crippled/en-ified name. Funnily the same but worse (as in not working at all) I have heard about Japan banks, where they had(have?) really big issues if you have a middle name.).
lol... how much time do you have? Here's just one to start with off the top of my head: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC#Controversies