Just like the EU started their independent EU-wide (500 million people) payment network to become independent of the American payment monopolists. It took a fascist US admin to get the move world-wide rolling to decouple from the US and towards smaller sovereignty, but ultimately it is for the better.
This project started in 2016. It just took a decade to roll out.
If you are referring to SEPA Instant, thats not true: It started operating in 2017, though not many participants back then.
What happened last year/this year, is, thats its mandatory for banks to offer it across the EU.
I'm talking about Canada, which started formally planning this in 2016.
The US federal government also released their own version of this in 2023 (US FedNow).
It's been an obvious next step for a while now.
Far more likely was the election of a banker as PM. He did chair both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. No doubt he knows how to get banks to do things.