SEPA isn't great, but there exist functioning country-wide systems as you mention.
> And even if you wanted to implement all these systems, it's so much effort that you're back to relying on payment providers like Stripe, realistically.
No. Payment providers like Stripe have to comply with the rules placed upon them by the card networks. If you only have to deal with European payment systems + FedNow, you don't have to worry about things like the MATCH list. This removes 95% of the censorship issues.
> And even if you wanted to implement all these systems, it's so much effort that you're back to relying on payment providers like Stripe, realistically.
No. Payment providers like Stripe have to comply with the rules placed upon them by the card networks. If you only have to deal with European payment systems + FedNow, you don't have to worry about things like the MATCH list. This removes 95% of the censorship issues.