Could you tell a bit more regarding international payments from where to where?
From POV of EU citizen (though extra biased due to Poland just using IBAN numbers), international payments are pretty fast - personally the biggest issue is when I need to figure out IBAN/BIC codes because receiver doesn't know them. Payment for SWIFT transfer and currency exchange can be still annoying, which I mitigate by having currency accounts, but still not as big as it could be.
From POV of EU citizen (though extra biased due to Poland just using IBAN numbers), international payments are pretty fast - personally the biggest issue is when I need to figure out IBAN/BIC codes because receiver doesn't know them. Payment for SWIFT transfer and currency exchange can be still annoying, which I mitigate by having currency accounts, but still not as big as it could be.