I've heard about the popularity of SWIFT. ACH is nowhere near as accessible, and it has fees depending on your bank or 3rd party ACH provider.
EMV was also much more rapidly and properly deployed as compared to the US, where some javacard applets just give a static code instead of a rolling code. We have literally hundreds of banks and credit unions, plus a few thousand payment processing resellers all fighting to hold back progress in the payments industry here.
If I'm not wrong SWIFT is already on the downward. Most services that had my SWIFT code requested me to update it to my IBAN code instead because SWIFT was being replaced.
Plus, inside the Eurozone+Friends, you can use SEPA payments across borders, and it is very cheap or even free.
EMV was also much more rapidly and properly deployed as compared to the US, where some javacard applets just give a static code instead of a rolling code. We have literally hundreds of banks and credit unions, plus a few thousand payment processing resellers all fighting to hold back progress in the payments industry here.