[kkfx]

In France the most common barcode for payments is the TIP SEPA, a Datamatrix variety mostly used by public bodies for tax payments.

The reason they are rightly opposed is that they favor and push mobile dependency, witch means that you must own a smartphone to do something, sure that's not technically true, but that's practically true for most users. The real reason why are not widespread is people inertia in adopting anything new respect of their routine though.

Personally I found FAR easier if just both people and institution known how to damn use computers at a basic level like: "if you want some money please include immediately copy-pastable full information in clear text instead of crappy heavyweight docs that regularly lack some information".

For instance: get a France or Italian electricity bill, a gazillion of information presents, but try to find the damn address of the bill so if you have two or more houses you immediately identify it... In most case you can find written very little somewhere, sometimes is not present at all. Equally when you read an email. That's for company's side. For customer's side the same most call a callcenter "hy, I'm john, calling about something strange in your last bill". Even better: some companies add refs: .... to their communication, you call the call center, give the ref they do not know what to do because since almost no one use them no one have added a damn search by ref in their CRM/ERP/* UI.

Even worse: we have mandatory OpenBank APIs for institutions but not for customers. As a result instead of easily manage your finances with the comfort of a personal client for all banks, institutions etc auto-updated via feeds you need to login (with absurd procedures, that frequently mandate crappy mobile crapplications) to a gazillion of different sites and no easy way to concentrate your information.

[jaclaz]

>or Italian electricity bill

Usually on the top left of first page there is "Dati Fornitura", with the address where energy is provided:

https://www.servizioelettriconazionale.it/content/dam/sen/he...

Maybe it depends on the specific energy supplier?

[seszett]

> France electricity bill

The address is in the left-hand block, under the section called "Lieu de consommation":

https://prix-elec.com/sites/prix-elec.com/files/2020-04/fact...

That's for EDF though, other providers might show it in a less obvious way I guess.

I generally agree with your comment though.

[stop50]

In germany HBCI/Fints is an standard quite a few banks use. I think its the oldest onlinebanking standard that is still in use. you can send money, check transactions and everything runs over https. The user only has to enter his credentials and optional an second factor. For sending money an second factor was always used.