There are some surviving national circuits like PagoBancomat (as the sibling comment from Scrollone) and Dankort (Denmark) and girocard (Germany). My personal impression is that they are slowly going out of fashion in favor of visa/mastercard only (probably because they can't offer better prices than them).
I don't see a solution to the duopoly, apart from lobbying politicians to support this national payment infrastructure. Especially in recent times I can also see how some governments might not want to rely entirely on two US companies for running their entire economy, so something might move on that side, so there's hope on that side.
The EU has already been moving on this front in the last years by forcing the banks to provide programming interfaces to initiate bank payments, and that's why you can now see more and more options to "pay by bank" online in EU. These online payments generally skip card circuits and run over normal SEPA bank transfers.
More info here on the last part: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Services_Directive
Pyanodon changes factorio so much. The byproducts are a big issue, and you need to get in the mentality that often it's fine to burn up items just to avoid the logistical nightmare. The biggest change for me is how expensive infrastructure is. You often need buildings that eat up 10 minutes of production just in materials. Scaling up is a challenge also because of how huge he buildings are (both a blessing and a curse) and how expensive everything is. Even conveyor belts are expensive at the beginning.
I played py hard mode until py science 1, then later on I started what was supposed to be an easier playthrough in pyblock, but i still stopped with a few parts missing for logistical science.
I still consider it one of the best mods out there (it's really well balanced), but you should start playing it only with a "I will not finish it" mentality, since it's thousands of hours long.