Earlier quoted context omitted.
Americans have such a strange relationship with technology... the most innovative startups, and yet the worse infrastructure. here in Europe it's the contrary :) and btw: the service will be active in 2023 or 2024... while I enjoy immediate transfers bank to bank since years...
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…
Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments
261–270 of 431 posts
Re: Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is another reason. This is very specific to the way USA does things. It has to do with the role of the government vs. market. Other countries also had an antiquated payments infrastructure e.g. Cheques in Britian, Scandinavian countries etc. The government there simply mandated the dozen or so banks to come up with an instant/real-time payment system and it was rolled out in a few years US has more than 10,000…
I wonder if there are a lot of studies of the market "fighting back" progress. Everything about the free market is predicated on informed customer decisions, and if you, as a company, can gaslight consumers effectively through propaganda (let alone lobbying...), then you've basically broken the invisible hand. Have there been studies about this? I'm pretty sure Adam Smith predates mass advertising, branding, modern m…
To put it simply, humans are creatures of habit. In a vacuum devoid of propaganda, we will still continue to repeat the habits we have developed.
Facebook or google don’t need to do any advertising to keep their audience on the platform. That pesky “g-o” you impulsively type into the address bar will do it for them!
The only saving grace for humanity is that people die, and not all of their habits get passed to the next generation.
Re: Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
The FBI receives every payment card swipe in the United States, in real-time, with no warrant. This has been going on for at least a decade. There is approximately zero financial privacy in the US.
Do you have a source for this?
Re: Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments
#264Settlement 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…
Re: Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here in The Netherlands, instant electronic payments with your debit card (pinnen) has been widely available since 1990. People sometimes used cheques before that, but even then it was rare. Most large payments happened by "Acceptgiro". It's a form that the sender would mail to the bank to authorize a payment to another bank account. Not sure if there's a proper English name for it.
Please note that "pin" transactions are not settled instantly. It's just that when you pay via pin, the vendor of the machine (most likely CCV or similar) guarantees the shop they get the money. The actual money transfers (the €5 you paid at some shop from your account to the pin terminal vendor, and the hourly or daily total for that shop from the vendor to the shop's internal account) take place hours after the fac…
Re: Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments
#266One 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…
This is what cryptocurrency people ignore. They see reversing as a bug, when it's clearly not.
Let's say you abuse linking, and you take money. Great. The tx is reversed and you go to jail.
Prevention is better, but it's not that the security isn't there.
Re: Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments
#267Nearly 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.
It always feels like going back in time whenever an American requests a cheque. I haven't filled one in for over 15 years at this stage.
Germany doesn't have cheques.
Re: Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could also be a forced thing due to being relatively fragmented with many different countries under a union which isn't as tight as the US union of states. Great thing about the US is that it's possibly the biggest homogeneous market in the world where you can form a lot of reliable expectations of people throughout. By contrast, countries such as China and India are highly diverse culturally. You can't even expect p…
China is diverse linguistically? You mean to say I can encounter some one in a major metro in China and they won't speak mainland Mandarin?
Re: Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments
#269One 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…
In general - from my time working at a phone company call center some years back - it is a much better indicator of security to ask folks to verify some account information than to try to say someone is doing something fraudulent by judging whether or not the sound of their voice matches what I think it should sound like based on their name. Verifying information tends to mean that the person has permission to speak about it. A lot of companies will let folks 'authorize' someone to speak on an account, set up a password, or simply allow her to tell them to talk to you and hand the phone to you. If you call from her personal phone, that is another step to verify as well.
Trying to judge someone's voice doesn't add security, though. Some folks don't have voices that can be classed as one gender: Some folks voices simply are deeper or higher than expected. Not to mention that some folks are transgender, which does mean that sometimes the voice won't match outward appearance or perceived gendered name. Some folks have health issues that make their voices seem deeper or higher as well.
They could have just though you were old, too. Sometimes older voices are more unisex.
To complicate things even more, parents name their children non-gendered names and some names have switched genders over the years. And to add another layer: Foreign names can sound like they "belong" to a gender they aren't traditionally used for.