[PeterisP]

It's my impression that pretty much all functional countries (e.g. perhaps not Somalia or during a civil war, but including most less developed countries) have "standardized bank to bank transactions across all banks in the country".

The big difference is how fast and cheap these standardized bank-to-bank transactions are; with USA lagging behind in this area somewhat. In USA a wire transfer is more expensive than a credit card payment, in China, EU, Russia, etc it's cheaper than a credit card payment.