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Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments

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

#401

Post by geofft »

skeletal88 wrote: post #330
reaperducer wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the concern about national ID and political enemies? Because America has seen what happens when it's used in other countries. The HN crowd is mostly too young to remember these sorts of things, or to have learned about them in school. But it's a very short ride from "What's the big deal with national IDs?" to "SELECT * FROM 'residents' WHERE 'religion' = 'jewish' ORDER BY 'national_id';"

But the government already has all the data about you. Just in lots of places and kind of disorganised I guess. I see that having an ID number for everyone would better help to organise the data and let the government offer better services. Like.. when one deparment has asked for my address then it stores it somewhere, and when some other department needs it, then it gets it from the database, and doesn't have to ask…

Right - the problem with "the government shouldn't be too competent so that it can't competently do harm" (which my gut wants to agree with) is that the parts that do good are unloved and unfunded and the parts that do harm will figure out a way to make it happen, usually because the harm benefits someone in power and the good does not.

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

#402

Post by randomdude402 »

novok wrote: post #386
013a wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US banks have something mostly like this: Zelle [1]; the company behind it, Early Warning Systems, is owned by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Capital One, Wells Fargo, PNC, basically every bank has a stake in it, and every bank supports it. And it works better than Cash App/Venmo; enter phone number or email address, get an instant direct bank-to-bank transfer, no fees, all from the normal bank app you'd already be…

What skeeves me out about zelle is there is no fraud protection unlike most other payment methods in the USA. So I'm going to continue to use venmo, credit cards, etc: https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/16/zelle-users-are-finding-ou...

When people started trying to pressure me to use Venmo, my research at the time led me to the conclusion that it offers no guarantee of fraud protection either.

Just like PayPal before it, it's not a bank and doesn't have to follow any of the rules.

How it's legal to operate in such a fashion is beyond my ability to understand, but that's my understanding of the situation.

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

#403

Post by tlavoie »

patmorgan23 wrote: post #105
nucleardog wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t say Canada is “far behind” because the banks like to rip people off. We’ve had a single unified payment network for like 40 years. We’ve had instantly settled electronic transfers (Interac e-Transfer) exposed to consumers directly through their institutions for about 20 years. We’ve had chip and pin and NFC contactless payments for quite a long time. And the rip off is really just the handful of big banks.…

The US has a unified payment system (ACH) and has had it for many decades it's just not instant, usually takes 3 business days for a transaction to fully settle.

Interac (in Canada) is trivially simple to use, and quick.

1. Send the payment through your logged in session at the bank or credit union, or via their respective phone app. 2. Select the recipient, adding a new one if needed. They'll need a mobile # or email address. 3. Include the question and its one-word answer that the recipient has to answer to accept. 4. Hit send 5. Recipient is notified, follows the link, and answers the question. If they have it set up, it might be auto-deposited without the question/answer.

It takes minutes, and doesn't ask the sender for the recipient's banking details.

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

#405

Post by liuyong »

_-___________-_ wrote: post #352
liuyong wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confirm that, the situation may improve in the next generation.

I take issue with the word "improve" there. Whilst I definitely agree that a common language is valuable in many ways, it would be preferable if a common language could be achieved without a loss of diversity (i.e. additional to, rather than replacing, the existing languages). Different languages embody different cultures, and different ways of thinking. This diversity should be celebrated and embraced, not only as a…

Agreed. But this trend looks unstoppable,to most parents in Shanghai, even English is more important than local language.

Maybe what happend in 2020 would change that...

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

#406

Post by egourlao »

ryaniscool wrote: post #372
dboreham wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than that if the amount is non-trivial. Wells Fargo won't allow you to send an amount over $10k instantly without physically entering a branch.

This is typical around the world. This is probably because it's a very practical way to limit losses if someone did gain access to your online banking. When I lived in Australia, which I believe has a very modern banking system, I couldn't instantly send more than $5k a day. The one time I needed to send more money, I was fine with going into a branch.

FWIW the app for my ING bank account in the Netherlands allowed me to move up the slider allows me to move up the slider for daily transfers up to 50k euros. A little scary, but thought it could be handy if I need to move money around one day. Probably a different regulatory context, though.

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

#407

Post by marv3lls »

djsumdog wrote: post #214
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…

My first job out of university was working for a debt collection firm that made its own ACH engine in Perl. I remember all the 99999s and headers and stuff. I didn't work very much on the engine though (thankfully). I was pretty shocked at just how far behind the American banking system was when I lived overseas for a bit. I wrote about it here: https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-american-banking-system-i...

Upvote for your amazing domain!!

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

#409

Post by tssva »

013a wrote: post #367
koopuluri wrote: post #216

I moved to India at the start of the year and there's the Universal Payment Interface (UPI) here that essentially allows a Venmo like interface to transfer $ instantaneously from any bank account to another - by simply using the recipient's phone number or a QR code. There are multiple apps that interface with UPI, and the barrier to entry isn't high - allowing for good competition on the UX. Literally every person I…

US banks have something mostly like this: Zelle [1]; the company behind it, Early Warning Systems, is owned by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Capital One, Wells Fargo, PNC, basically every bank has a stake in it, and every bank supports it. And it works better than Cash App/Venmo; enter phone number or email address, get an instant direct bank-to-bank transfer, no fees, all from the normal bank app you'd already be…

According to the Zelle website they have 924 partner financial institutions. If you total the number of FDIC insured institutions and the number of credit unions in the US the total is very near 10,000, so Zelle is very far from universal.

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

#410

Post by fragmede »

Dobbs wrote: post #314
cowsandmilk wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your blog article is startlingly incorrect pretty early on. Individuals can and do use ACH between each other all the time. It is literally how paper checks work in the US. And I’ve been able to use a routing number and account number to send money to someone else online via ACH for decades...

In the UK if I want to send someone money to anyone in the UK I open the mobile app and input their sort and account number, type in the amount of money and hit send. Done. Similarly in the NL if I want to send someone money to anyone in the EuroZone I open my bank app type in their IBAN type in the amount of money and hit send. Done. Back in 2017 when I lived in the US this just wasn't possible. If I wanted to send…

In the interm there's been unfortunately little progress. Zelle is supported 'natively' by all major banks, although it has horrible UX (starting with "each bank is different"), and allows for pseudo-instant transfers of small amounts (up to $x,000) between individuals in the US. (It is instant for the user, but on the subject of replacing ACH, it's more correct to say that it's pseudo-instant, same as credit cards - it seems instant to users, but until ACH is replaced, settlement will still happen in nightly (possibly half-day-ly) settlement batch files.)

It's mostly functional, the problem is that it doesn't work for anything more than trivial amounts, for various reasons, so the choices are either to wait 2 days, or physically walk to a bank location, authenticate, get them to give you a magical piece of paper, and then walk to the other location. (And then sometimes you still have to wait a few days more if it's not something you normally do "while the check clears".)

It's a byzantine system, but at least it doesn't (as a customer - it still does in places on the backend) involve me having to find a fax machine to send a fax, or send a picture of a check through a sketchy "free" online service.

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