Here in The Netherlands, we have a platform called iDeal. All dutch banks are connected and all webshops accept it (it's hard to find a place to use your creditcard here). Transactions are instant and non-refundable. Costs are around 0.35 per transaction and NO % fees. Just a fixed amount per transaction. For big volumes, that per-transaction amount can be lower. It's amazing and I wished they'd just roll that out worldwide. No risk for merchants at all.
It's also much less reliable than the credit card networks. Fundamentally it's not ready to be a large instant payment provider, as it's still based on the same slow batch processes that run your normal bank transfers.
This doesn't really solve the problem, it just shifts all risk onto the buyer. Under this system, if you take my money and run, I have no possible recourse
It's something that works very well here in The Netherlands. Also, because it's directly linked to bank accounts and you have to identify yourself, etc. to set it all up, it really isn't a problem here. If people see they can pay with iDeal, people will trust it and it really has not been an issue that I know of.
Here in The Netherlands, everyone is charged sales tax (it's always included in all prices that's communicated to consumers, required by law).
Companies pay sales tax to the state and can deduct sales tax they paid to other companies.
There are rules for applying sales taxes to other EU countries and it get's complicated fast; once you do more than X amount in another EU country, you're supposed to register in that country and file taxes in that country. Thresholds here: https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/sites/taxation/files/r...
