Many European countries have had viable online alternatives since forever, and a lot of them are being consolidated into Werk, which will also enable physical payments

I'm pretty sure that I know what the answer is (sadly), but I'll try anyways:

Any chance folks in the US can use these, in the US?

This is a genuine question, although I don't have my hopes up. It would be nice to have some actual competition / choices

China has cleverly replaced the Mastercard/Visa duopoly with an AliPay/WeChat Pay duopoly.

Many countries have alternatives already. In Poland Blik is ubiquitous and very very easy to use. And I love how it's implemented, Visa and MasterCard could learn from it.

Tldr - you open the app on your phone and it gives you a 6 digit BLIK code, you give that code to the seller, then a notification comes up on the app saying "seller X is trying to debit your account by amount Y, agree?". It's brilliant because then the seller gets nothing identifiable about you. Even if someone overhears the code, it's only valid 60 second so it's useless. Unlike with regular cards there is no risk of losing one or using a fake terminal that scans your card instead. And any transaction has to be explicitly rather than implicitly approved. Love it.

Bitcoin exists. Completely permissionless, anyone on earth can use it. Easier to accept as a merchant than any third party integration. Doesn't require you to trust any government at all.

The EU 'seeks' to do a lot of things but is notoriously ineffective.