[cowbolt]

Norway and Denmark have national card schemes (BankAxept and Dankort) which are used for virtually all PoS transactions. They cost a fraction of the transaction costs that Visa and Mastercard charge. These arose by banks agreeing to a standardized solution.

Was there ever any attempt to do something similar in the US?

[AaronM]

Doubtful; the card processors would probably lobby hard against it, and given our current state of politics would never pass