Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bank transfers as a payment method

bam.kalzumeus.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 335 posts

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#41

Post by DenseComet »

spir wrote: post #26

Let's adopt patio11's criteria to a programmable public blockchain, like ethereum - Customer UX: crypto wallets built into browsers and phones. Connect your wallet to any webpage to pay. Or, tap your phone to pay via a crypto payment - Certainty: crypto transactions are, by default, instant and irreversible. Any kind of chargeback scheme, refund policy, or time-delay may be built into the crypto app layer - Settlemen…

- Customer UX: This really isn't as straightforward as you put it. The main issue for customers is that if they loose their wallet, they loose everything. This has to be accounted as part of UX, even making transactions is simple and straightforward.

- Settlement/Certainty time: Blockchains combine these into one. They depends heavily on the specific chain. For some networks, its basically instant. Eth seems to be around a minute or so. Bitcoin is around 60 minutes.

- Reversibility: Agreed, although whether this is good or bad depends on the user.

I like the way it was said in the article, these are all axes of comparison. Consumers choose products based on a set of criteria. For many, irreversibility or the risk of loosing everything due to a lost wallet is a dealbreaker, even if transfers may be much faster than other methods.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#42

Post by thweorui234 »

+1 for UPI.

However, UPI is not "open" in the true sense (you can't have an app running on linux or AOSP for instance). It's locked to certain apps, which apparently need license from GOI. The whole Indian banking system is also too reliant on SMS + TOTP.

That UPI locks people to US proprietary systems, while GOI also has been making noises on tech monopolies, is apparently an irony not apparent the babucracy.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#43

Post by yashg »

xyst wrote: post #18
devnull3 wrote: post #11

About UPI: The standardisation of payment interface is done by a corporation called NPCI. It’s an initiative from India's central bank (RBI) and it is non-profit. [1] This means that a private player's implementation does not become defacto standard. Multiple factors are aligning to make UPI successful: 1. Massive Mobile (smart phones) & Internet penetration 2. Cheap mobile data from telcos 3. Low cost of payment inf…

I could do without #5 to be honest. Should be working towards a more decentralized approach.

Why this obsession with doing away with a central authority? What is so evil about a central bank? Decentralization is not cheap. I buy a pack of bread from a door-to-door bread and eggs salesman (Yes that's a thing in India). It costs INR 40 ($0.53). I pay him via UPI, he gets money instantly in his bank account with zero fees. He gets full INR 40 like I had paid him in cash. I don't think any decentralized system will be able to do that with zero fees.

It obviously costs money to banks to maintain the infra that makes UPI possible. It still costs nothing for end users to use UPI. You know why is that? Because the Reserve Bank of India has mandated that. A central authority that grants banking licenses and oversees all banks in the country. Banks have to factor in the cost of supporting UPI as a regular cost of business. Banks actually may be saving money by supporting UPI because they don't have to deal with cash. They need less branches and ATMs, less people to handle all the cash.

You remove the central authority, and it becomes anarchy.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#44

Post by vishnugupta »

captn3m0 wrote: post #38

Fun Fact: UPI also allows certain other interesting kinds of transactions based on "special VPAs". These include: - IFSC code and account number combination, resolved directly by NPCI, is represented as account-no@ifsc-code.ifsc.npci (e.g. 12345@HDFC0000001.ifsc.npci) - RuPay card number, resolved directly by NPCI, is represented as card-no@rupay.npci (e.g. 1234123412341234@rupay.npci) The following were proposed, bu…

This is a very useful list.

I recently found out that every FASTAG (highway toll payments) has its own VPA handle for convenient top-us.

https://www.npci.org.in/PDF/npci/netc/Bank-UPI-Handels.pdf

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#45

Post by krinchan »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #19
charlieyu1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it could work, it would have worked three decades ago. Bank transfers are just a pain in the ass. I still remember all the fees I paid just to transfer money to another bank/another country. Cryptocurrency was considered a way to simplify the problem, but probably didn’t work in this aspect

Zelle payment transfers are painless, instantaneous, and free. I can do it from my bank's app or online banking page. Punch in the person's phone number or email, enter the amount, done. They don't even have to accept the payment. And nobody has to describe what the transaction was for; it's highly private, beyond who the money came from / went to and the amount. The caveat is that the money transfer cannot be undone…

It’s crazy how much Zelle has taken off in my area. Home contractors. My barber. My family.

Also the etiquette that’s emerged around using Zelle is funny too. If I’m paying someone new, they’ll normally have me send $1 as a test to make sure we all have the right contact info before sending the rest.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#46

Post by kalleboo »

melony wrote: post #27
rohithkp wrote: post #6

UPI can potentially be scaled to all countries. I think the biggest USP of UPI is the interoperability between payment apps(Google Pay, Paytm, PhonePe, etc), VPAs(alice@icici, bob@axis, dan@upi, 9848123456@paytm) and banks. One could have an account with bank A, create a VPA with bank B and use that VPA to pay a business through virtually any of the payment apps(GPay, Paytm, PhonePe, BHIM, etc). The main pain point U…

Will this suffer from the usual payment restrictions imposed by PayPal/Stripe?

VISA/MasterCard-based services suffer from US regulatory pressure, applying US norms across the planet. Non-US-based payments systems will instead have pressure from their respective countries. For instance they may care less about WikiLeaks pulling the pants down on US intelligence, but may be even more strict on porn.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#47

Post by yashg »

charlieyu1 wrote: post #8
otar wrote: post #2

It's a no-brainer. Card processing fees are just too high (2.9% + $0.3). Account transfers bring more flexibility and convenience and costs almost nothing.

If it could work, it would have worked three decades ago. Bank transfers are just a pain in the ass. I still remember all the fees I paid just to transfer money to another bank/another country. Cryptocurrency was considered a way to simplify the problem, but probably didn’t work in this aspect

India, a third world country has worked it out. Apart from UPI, we have other bank transfer mechanism that doesn't involve writing a check. There's RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement) for large payments. It's what we use when we buy property or do large business transactions. There's NEFT (National Electronic Fund Transfer) for instant transfers upto INR 500K. There's IMPS (The underlying mechanism of UPI) for instant transfers upto INR 100K.

Intra-bank transfers are always free and instant because bank is just changing numbers on two accounts in the same database.

It has been so easy to move money between banks in India that we don't even think about it.

A decentralized system like crypto which uses pointless proof-of-work to remove trust providing intermediaries are just too slow, expensive and overall inefficient by design. They won't work in real world.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#48

Post by riffraff »

hjtkfkfmr wrote: post #37
manmal wrote: post #29

Just yesterday, I deposited money from my bank account to Coinbase via SEPA. Refreshed the Coinbase page, and it was there, ready to buy digital currency with - so, the transaction was instant, or almost so. The transfer didn’t cost me anything, and neither did it Coinbase (it seems). Coinbase seems to be positive the transaction will settle, or else it wouldn’t let me use the money immediately, right? Reversibility…

According to article there is a huge amount of SEPA fraud going around because seller receives you banking details. Unauthorized direct debit maybe?

Yeah that confused me about the article. I've never heard of SEPA direct debit fraud, as my understanding is that SDD requires a notification to be sent before any debit is initiated to give time to the user to block it.

It surely can be an issue but I'm not familiar with people refusing to share their IBAN number because they're afraid of random charges, which is a thing for ACH numbers.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#49

Post by andrewshadura »

hjtkfkfmr wrote: post #37
manmal wrote: post #29

Just yesterday, I deposited money from my bank account to Coinbase via SEPA. Refreshed the Coinbase page, and it was there, ready to buy digital currency with - so, the transaction was instant, or almost so. The transfer didn’t cost me anything, and neither did it Coinbase (it seems). Coinbase seems to be positive the transaction will settle, or else it wouldn’t let me use the money immediately, right? Reversibility…

According to article there is a huge amount of SEPA fraud going around because seller receives you banking details. Unauthorized direct debit maybe?

The article misrepresents how direct debit works. Just having your bank details is absolutely not enough to initiate a transfer: the user must confirm it by issuing so called direct debit mandate. This mandate usually has a limit on the amount, and can be revoked at any time. Also, the business faces penalties for repeated failed transfers.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#50

Post by grecy »

ashconnor wrote: post #21
grecy wrote: post #17

This is already very common in Australia and Canada. I'm sure a ton of other countries too.

Bill payments sure, but not many businesses accept Interac e-transfers.

I bought something here in Australia last week with a bank transfer, and I've paid plenty of business using e-transfer in Canada - especially when covid kicked in.
Post reply on HN