Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments • Hacker News Board

Re: Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments

#141

Post by swiley » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

harikb wrote: post #130

One thing I don't see mention regarding the existing US ACH (or whatever interbank) system is that there is absolutely no verification or security in this system. Just like verification of paper check signature and a whole lot of other financial items - most banks allow anything until questioned. The easiest and cost effective way is to let it happen and reimburse for failures. 1. I have linked a non-joint account in…

I'm pretty sure they at least authenticate the sftp connection for the ach transfers.

Re: Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments

#142

Post by ra7 » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:05 AM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #39

Settlement between banks in the United States is astoundingly complicated, for (fascinating, terrifying) historical reasons. FedNow is a huge step towards fixing holes that private companies have been papering over for over two decades. Blatant self promotion: for anybody interested in learning more about the Automated Clearing House system (which FedNow will eventually supplement) and interbank settlement in general…

The whole history of settlement is really fascinating starting from correspondent balances to Clearinghouse (now CHIPS) to central bank clearing. I highly recommend Economics of Money and Banking course on Coursera if anyone is interested to learn more.

Re: Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments

#143

Post by Shared404 » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:09 AM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #77

kelnos wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things (probably more) contribute to this, I think: 1) Americans have been trained from birth to distrust government in all forms. Centralizing more and more services triggers a visceral fear response. (IMO it's nonsense, for the most part, but it's there nonetheless.) 2) Being "first to market" with new technologies often means you're just stuck with the sub-optimal first version, while other countries can learn…

> On the flip side, when I'm in Europe, I definitely run into more places that only take cash, which I find annoying to no end. This is mostly for tax evasion reasons and sometimes for employees skimming off the top. The more “proper” a place, the less likely they are to encourage cash transactions. Happens in US too, of course. It’s always the shady places that are cash only and everyone else is digital.

Your local Walmart/Chain Restaurant/$FRANCHISE is going to be just as shady, but less obvious.

Source: Know people who have recently worked across a variety of franchise type locations, they definitely still have _plenty_ of things go below board.

Re: Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments

#144

Post by api » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:10 AM UTC

pacaro wrote: post #118

api wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its because a generation or two of Americans were propagandized heavily that anything socialized will immediately lead to Soviet communism. If we build infrastructure Lenin will rise from the dead and transform into a giant mech warrior and wade across the Atlantic to destroy us all.

I would watch this movie

It's called Red Dawn and it's awesome.

Re: Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments

#145

Post by Shared404 » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:11 AM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #31

gizmo686 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have a national ID. It is called social security, and it is bad at its job because it was explicitly not supposed to be a national ID when it was created.

Alternately, every flipping service that demands you identify with a phone number (or billable credit card); which is being used as a proxy for an ID.

> demands you identify with a phone number...

I recently found jmp.chat [0] which provides an easy workaround for this.

[0] https://jmp.chat

Re: Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments

#146

Post by rafaelturk » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:12 AM UTC

lelc wrote: post #84

If anyone from the FED is reading this I have this advice: don't use ISO20022! (I've been working on the brazilian instant payments project, known as PIX). It's an overly-complicated-try-to-solve-everything standard that promises interoperability but only delivers pain and misery. Since each country has its own standards for person and account identification, in dealing with these local realities, the ISO20022 adds q…

Not a good start.....

To support these goals, the service will use the widely accepted ISO 20022 standard and adopt other industry best practices, that would remove barriers to interoperability, in order to avoid unnecessary and burdensome incompatibilities, to the extent the existing private-sector service also uses publicly available, widely accepted standards.

Re: Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments

#147

Post by culopatin » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:13 AM UTC

lelc wrote: post #84

If anyone from the FED is reading this I have this advice: don't use ISO20022! (I've been working on the brazilian instant payments project, known as PIX). It's an overly-complicated-try-to-solve-everything standard that promises interoperability but only delivers pain and misery. Since each country has its own standards for person and account identification, in dealing with these local realities, the ISO20022 adds q…

What alternative do you suggest? Keeping in mind all the parties that will be involved, besides your project.

Re: Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments

#148

Post by culopatin » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:17 AM UTC

auslegung wrote: post #22

pfundstein wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be pedantic, 2023 is less than 2½ years away, so not "4 years at least".

In my experience with government, 2.5 years easily becomes "4 years at least". Maybe that's what the person meant?

The FED is not government. And if it’s slow it’s because of the big impact it would have if they messed up, and because it’s already hard for them to hold a positive reputation without messing up.

Re: Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments

#149

Post by tialaramex » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:19 AM UTC

Gustomaximus wrote: post #117

crazygringo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a general rule, the US is terrible at a lot of first-world things for a good reason: because it was the first (or close). We have crappy old subways, airports, bridges, skyscrapers, and so on... because we built them early, versions 1.0. And they stuck around. Other countries had the luxuries of building their versions decades later, when the technology was 2.0 and 3.0 and so on. So the US is stuck with both old a…

I dont buy this we were first to do it. Plenty of other countries do continual upgrades to subways, banking, bridges, financial systems etc. My reasons are partly these; 1) I think US tend to think of itself as No.1 nation and makes it less likely to look at other countries doing things better and looking to follow. I think this becomes a mental limitation for many US citizens and policy makers. 2) There is too much…

Your point (1) definitely. Humans are far more alike than they are different so you will be very well served by learning from the experiences of others instead of insisting on making all the mistakes for yourself, not least because some mistakes are fatal.

Take US healthcare. There are a lot of models for how you can deliver universal healthcare to all your country's residents. They're all different. They all have problems. They're all better than the current US situation. They're all cheaper for a start, most of them have better outcomes by some measures, often by almost all measures.

There was plenty of room for two political parties to have ideological disagreements about how to deliver universal healthcare to Americans as a result. Which examples to follow and which to reject.

But the Republicans didn't do that. They decided the hill they wanted to die on (or at least, for some of their voters to die on) was the ideological rejection of universal healthcare as a goal. They would literally tell people it can't be done, despite the fact that every comparable country already did it.

Re: Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments

#150

Post by jdub » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:25 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #101

pfundstein wrote: post #24

Nearly all first world countries enjoy instant payments at the point of sale and person to person. It boggles my mind that it has taken this long and a pandemic to even set the gears in motion, all while battling ridiculous levels of cheque and credit card fraud.

As a general rule, the US is terrible at a lot of first-world things for a good reason: because it was the first (or close). We have crappy old subways, airports, bridges, skyscrapers, and so on... because we built them early, versions 1.0. And they stuck around. Other countries had the luxuries of building their versions decades later, when the technology was 2.0 and 3.0 and so on. So the US is stuck with both old a…

You'll generally find the rest of the (first) world did 1.0 too. But they invest in public infrastructure, so also did 2.0 and 3.0.

The USA is a very strange mix of hyper-first-world and second/third-world, and a lot of it has to do with how taxes are raised and spent.