The local card systems still exist in most places, but they only work if you have a card from that country, for people travelling across Europe its useless as once you cross the border people won't accept that card anymore and you're back to taking only visa/mastercard.
Eurocheque existed for a long while for Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurocheque . But yes, trusting the US economic and political partnership and also choosing the cheaper option, the European banks eventually decided to not do the legwork of establishing a (global) payment network and settled on American Visa and Mastercard networks.
