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Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

itnews.com.au

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Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#171

Post by woobar »

alkonaut wrote: post #151
bloodorange wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be off topic I'm afraid but I did want to share my perspective on this. I've lived in two cultures - one where people split the bill and one where one person just pays for it and someone else does the next time and so on. I much prefer the latter approach and among well meaning people, it is hassle free. I believe this is so because on the long run, the differences don't add up to much. I think, in some way, for…

If you split and the next person pays the next time there is an assumption that it will likely happen again. If it’s a group of people that aren’t close friends it’s very convenient to not have to worry about that. I wouldn’t swish my friend for getting a beer or coffee but if we were 4 and had a dinner bill for €300 I probably would.

I am still confused, can't the restaurant personnel take care of this? In my life wait stuff is capable of parsing following requests:

- bring me my check, pls

- bring me the check, pls. And I pay for these two bozos (out of a bigger group)

- I'll cover everyone today.

- split it x-ways, pls.

Why do I need to add an extra step to consolidate the bill afterwards?

Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#172

Post by zmk_ »

Feniks wrote: post #137
baxtr wrote: post #13

Instant payments, aka “instant SEPA” will be available soon also in the EU https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-insta...

We had this years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDEAL Personally I think it should be NORMAL in 2018 to transfer money between bank accounts in near real time. Without transaction fees.

This is not only meant for commerce like iDEAL is. If anything it is supposed to work like the 'send to phone number' services offered by ING or ABN, for instance.

This is more like Swish in Sweden.

Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#173

Post by rco8786 »

bloodorange wrote: post #147
rco8786 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m gonna guess that the non-splitting country has a much flatter distribution of wealth?

Interesting. You are right indeed but might I ask how you made this connection? I never thought of it this way. One reason for it is probably that between my friends and me, there wasn't much disparity in income/wealth at the time when I was fortunate enough to be able to spend time with them regularly.

When people generally have less income disparity, their lifestyles will be more or less the same, and over time a culture of "well we spend about the same amount so let's just split it" can arise.

In other places (like the US), some people can be very conscious about how much they're spending because it's a significant portion of their income. You wouldn't want to split the check when you had a $10 salad to save money and a tablemate had the $50 filet and 2 $10 glasses of wine.

Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#174

Post by a254613e »

hocuspocus wrote: post #150
a254613e wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad everything else is abysmal when it comes to technology and payments in Germany. Most places don't accept anything besides cash for payments. Opening a bank account still involves a ton of paperwork. Official mobile apps, if they even exist, are horrible. Waiting for 2 days for SEPA transfer, even though it's usually technically done within hours. No realtime transactions for card transactions (even though the…

Credit and debit card acceptance could definitely be better (even though I was doing all right in Berlin), but I don't agree about opening bank accounts: - N26: it took me literally 10 minutes. Identification via video chat. - comdirect: as far as I remember, I mailed them one 4-page form, dropped by the post office for the PostIdent and that was it. - Postbank (I needed an IBAN quickly while waiting for comdirect ;)…

N26 is the only one that has semi useful applications and web interface.

My main problem with them is that they're first and foremost a startup, not a bank. Some issues I've had with them include double transactions, failed scheduled transactions, horrible 9-5 support, unable to unlock card because their web page was down for 24h. On top of that their security practices are horrible[0]

>I mailed them one 4-page form, dropped by the post office for the PostIdent and that was it.

And then you got 4-5 letters over the next couple of weeks. Not to mention that postident itself is a plague.

>I walked in, everything was done in 15 minutes.

And you walked out with a bunch of paperwork, and additional letters sent via post.

I've tried to open or had accounts with the following banks: N26, commerzbank, comdirect, dkb, fidor, ing diba

Dealing with any of them is like traveling back 20 years in time. Comparing it to countries that have it worse is always easy, but that does not mean that banks in Germany are not atrocious.

[0] - https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7969-shut_up_and_take_my_money

Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#175

Post by zmk_ »

wowca wrote: post #23
sandos wrote: post #12

This sounds like the swedish product "swish" which is immensely popular. Nobody does bank transfers between people, everybody transfers to your mobile number. So far I think there are no fees for personal use, either, although they said it would come later a few years ago. Transfers are of course instant and you can see the recipients name before you send the money, which is a great pro compared to a bank transfer to…

Do people really transfer that much money between them on a regular basis? Everyone was touting this as the selling point for some of the crypto currencies, but I've always thought this is a non-issue. It's anecdotal but I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I needed to transfer money to a person and not to a company.

I used the app four times since I moved to Sweden 2 years ago. I haven't touched cash, actually I am not sure how the current notes/coins (they changed them) look like. If you shop in stores/restaurants then you use cards mostly. Swish in my experience is for splitting bills (less common), at after work parties when someone buys beers and you pay them back, for very small vendors who do not want to bother with banks for getting CC terminals.

Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#176

Post by ghaff »

woobar wrote: post #171
alkonaut wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you split and the next person pays the next time there is an assumption that it will likely happen again. If it’s a group of people that aren’t close friends it’s very convenient to not have to worry about that. I wouldn’t swish my friend for getting a beer or coffee but if we were 4 and had a dinner bill for €300 I probably would.

I am still confused, can't the restaurant personnel take care of this? In my life wait stuff is capable of parsing following requests: - bring me my check, pls - bring me the check, pls. And I pay for these two bozos (out of a bigger group) - I'll cover everyone today. - split it x-ways, pls. Why do I need to add an extra step to consolidate the bill afterwards?

In my experience in the US, many restaurants don't want to deal with complicated splitting up of the bill. Most will allow for two-way splits but beyond that, many will be reluctant or outright refuse.

Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#177

Post by alkonaut »

woobar wrote: post #171
alkonaut wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you split and the next person pays the next time there is an assumption that it will likely happen again. If it’s a group of people that aren’t close friends it’s very convenient to not have to worry about that. I wouldn’t swish my friend for getting a beer or coffee but if we were 4 and had a dinner bill for €300 I probably would.

I am still confused, can't the restaurant personnel take care of this? In my life wait stuff is capable of parsing following requests: - bring me my check, pls - bring me the check, pls. And I pay for these two bozos (out of a bigger group) - I'll cover everyone today. - split it x-ways, pls. Why do I need to add an extra step to consolidate the bill afterwards?

They will do that, but it's cumbersome I think, especially if you had a large group ordering a lot of different things. And even more so if there was drinking involved. Now I just charge it to my card, snap a pic with my phone of the receipt and send to everyone at the table, and they can just swish the money over the next day or on the train home when they have time to deal with it. Keeps the accounting out of a fun night out.

Also it's easy to join a group that already have a table/tab in a bar for example, and leave before the tab is to be settled. You just say "I'm leaving, who do I swish money for 2 pints?" (Where you'd normally leave some cash on the table).

Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#178

Post by hocuspocus »

a254613e wrote: post #174
hocuspocus wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit and debit card acceptance could definitely be better (even though I was doing all right in Berlin), but I don't agree about opening bank accounts: - N26: it took me literally 10 minutes. Identification via video chat. - comdirect: as far as I remember, I mailed them one 4-page form, dropped by the post office for the PostIdent and that was it. - Postbank (I needed an IBAN quickly while waiting for comdirect ;)…

N26 is the only one that has semi useful applications and web interface. My main problem with them is that they're first and foremost a startup, not a bank. Some issues I've had with them include double transactions, failed scheduled transactions, horrible 9-5 support, unable to unlock card because their web page was down for 24h. On top of that their security practices are horrible[0] >I mailed them one 4-page form,…

N26 is a bank, they have a license. Given their growth I think they didn't do too bad overall, and I've never had a problem using their MasterCard as my main payment method while living in Germany. Granted, I wouldn't have used them as my main bank two years ago, but I think they got there.

And while video chat is better than PostIdent, I don't think a trip to your local post office is that bad compared to the alternatives.

As for the ton of paper in the mail, you're right, it's annoying, but that's in no way specific to banking, everything is like that in Germany.

In short, sure, it could be much better, but it could be much worse too.

Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#179

Post by throw7 »

djsumdog wrote: post #158

Even before this, Australia still had direct person-to-person transfers. They'd just take a day, and required an account number and name. I've written about this before, but American is terribly far behind on this: https://penguindreams.org/blog/the-american-banking-system-i... The closest thing we have in the US is Zelle, which is not a government mandated standard (like ACH) but a private standard created by banks…

uggghhh. and these person-to-person services are terrible in the u.s.

I was needed to help pay for a friend in the west coast for rent where the landlord took venmo. venmo denied me for who knows what reason. while this is going on, the landlord tried setting up google wallet (which I had already). I tried sending, but it never transferred (the bank said it was google's fault). I tried another one and it had to do that insert some money into account and read it to me dance which never showed up until later (which by then I gave up).

Re: Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform

#180

Post by coolspot »

xstartup wrote: post #162

Can anyone post a rough breakdown on how $1B can be spent to build such a system?

I imagine it could involve building two-tree tier 1 datacenters, writing couple independent software implementations cross-checking each other, integration with legacy systems, a lot of automated testing, documentation, training. Also big vendor prices are not exactly cheap or fair.
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