>and other remnants of the last century that are non-existent in many European countries
And also very much existent in many European countries, in particular the most important ones. Paper tech debt isn't exclusive to the US, any State that is old enough will have that sort of inertia. In my job I see a lot of systems dedicated to ingesting paper documents and normalizing them to newer digital standards, which obviously break constantly in semi-catastrophic fashion and requires regular manual intervention (I know a fellow production engineer who has refused to pay taxes on the Internet for as long as possible due to his experience of the sausage factory). Most of Western Europe seems to exist in that limbo.
I lived in a major west European nation for a decade and never saw:
* paper checks in use anywhere; in fact depositing one from the States was a huge pain, if you could even find a bank that would accept it
* any telephone system that authenticated an account number via touch-done dialing -- all had much more secure authentication systems that typically involved use of a custom digital ID two-factor via a specialized app or other mechanisms
Custom ID apps can be insecure as well. There are a lot of moving pieces there, from the app's source code itself to the security protocols and processes when someone has an issue with their app login or loses their phone.
Billions of euros were spent to make basic apps for tracking CoV-2 vaccine status and they all failed miserably. If governments couldn't get a basic QR app to be secure when they effectively wrote themselves a blank check, I wouldn't be so sure that the app used to authenticate all of your private government accounts is better implemented.
I literally used a paper check last month for my new apartment's deposit. It's still fairly common for some transactions in France. Last I heard, faxing was still a thing in corporate Germany.
> I literally used a paper check last month for my new apartment's deposit.
That's interesting to hear. I didn't know that was still common; this article from 5 years ago suggests Europe doesn't use checks any more, and that's my experience as well.
> The love affair with checks may be strictly American — countries in Europe, like Poland, Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands stopped issuing checks over the last two decades
Many of the electronic services charge fees which paper checks don't. There's a reason people do this, it's not "love" or lack of knowledge or legacy. It's a big incentive on large transfers (like rent) to avoid a percentage fee.
Direct bank transfers in many European countries I've transferred to is free and easy and the way everything (including rent) is typically done when a check might be used elsewhere. Same in other countries I've lived in in Asia. In the U.S. bank transfers may not be free, though.
My global observation is that sometimes certain kinds of countries, e.g. Uruguay, India, or Finland, are more agile at adopting new technology than certain two-tiered monoliths like the USA. Since they are often integrating technologies from a mix of themselves, USA, and EU, even China, it must have something to do with how strongly-rooted the previous existing technology was.
In my travels through Latin America it seems like a continental custom to go to the park downtown to use WiFi while sipping the local morning stimulant beverage.
