Buy European

A wallet

Please remember that it is a free service and like with most free stuff you still pay, just not with money. What they earn is your financial information - every transaction you do is logged and used to better target actions toward you.

Ultimately you get convenience and they get an angle to better work you in the future. The stuff you buy, the causes you support, etc., all is recorded and analysed to better understand how to drive you to spend more on shit you don't want in the first place.

I think that moving away from Google wallet is a good decision but getting into the same abusive relationship with another company is not.

Wero?

Samsung has an nfc payment servic too. That's about it sadly.

My alternative was to start carrying a wallet with cards. Maybe it's not wise to give card information for free to a service like that in general.

In Germany, some banks (Sparkassen and Volksbanken) use their own apps (on Android) instead of Google Wallet.

In Nordic countries there is MobilePay. I think in Norway they already have NFC payment. NFC payment should be coming to Finland later this year. It's already possible to pay in stores with MobilePay over Bluetooth, but it's a bit of a hassle compared to Google Pay/Apple Pay. MobilePay can be used to pay in online stores that support it, and you can also send and receive money from other people.

Here in Portugal, we have MBWay, works with NFC or QR code, it's free, it also replaces PayPal as you can send money to people and companies with just a phone number. If it could be integrated into an EU system, that would be great.

Any alternative I've found was either riddled with ads or paid (so I didn't try it, cause why would I pay if I don't even know it works)

Seems like its something we're still kinda stuck with. Try just paying with card or even better cash

My bank's app does it all. Not sure how common that is around the world, though. Much nicer having all my primary finance stuff buometrically locked away, provided by the people actually holding my funds.

If I use Wallet, it's just for storing music tickets and that sort of thing, but I often forget it's there to use for that anyway

Garmin Pay

Haven't tried it myself yet but Revolut seems very popular.