Within the Single Euro Payments Area, credit transfers (i.e. bank transfers) have been free for almost a decade and will be instant (<10s), effective November of this year. Another regulation, Payment Services Directive 2 will bring more open access to bank accounts as well, requiring banks to provide access to APIs.

Relatedly, the EU also limits interchange fees for credit and debit cards (to 0.2 and 0.3%, respectively). This is the reason why integrators like Stripe charge 1.4% for European and 2.9% for non-European cards.

Payments can be quick, simple and cheap. All you need is some competition, or regulation to favour end-users' interests.

But more importantly, that protection money becomes actual protection money, since you can't opt-out. I've bought a lot of used stuff over the years to strangers using cash, deliberately abdicating that protection. Yet if I want to do that online, I can't.