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Apple Cash

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Re: Apple Cash

#111

Post by a_paddy »

basisword wrote: post #97
x3ro wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true that bank transfers are fast, instant most of the time these days. However, when people want to quickly send me money, they still usually ask for paypal, simply because it’s easier to tell someone a nickname or email address than my IBAN. not that this is an unsolvable issue, just sharing my experience from Germany.

Interesting. In the UK we just need to share account number and sort code. These are quite easy to remember in your head. IBAN would complicate things. Is IBAN always required or only for cross-border transfers?

An IBAN is just the sort code and account number, with a prefix, so would be just as easy to remember.

Re: Apple Cash

#112

Post by AnssiH »

basisword wrote: post #97
x3ro wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true that bank transfers are fast, instant most of the time these days. However, when people want to quickly send me money, they still usually ask for paypal, simply because it’s easier to tell someone a nickname or email address than my IBAN. not that this is an unsolvable issue, just sharing my experience from Germany.

Interesting. In the UK we just need to share account number and sort code. These are quite easy to remember in your head. IBAN would complicate things. Is IBAN always required or only for cross-border transfers?

This varies by country, but e.g. in Finland IBANs completely replaced legacy numbers in 2010.

Mine is 5 characters longer than the legacy number was (added "FI", 2 check digits, 2 padding zeroes, removed dash), for a total of 18 characters.

Re: Apple Cash

#113

Post by johnwalkr »

basisword wrote: post #88

I find it odd things like this, Venmo, Square cash even need to exist. There’s a reason none of them get used much (or even exist) outside the US. Just fix banking in the US and they problems they solve disappear. In the UK (and the EU I believe too) bank transfers and instant and free. Digital banks like Monzo make it even easier (through contact syncing, better UI). Third party apps need not get involved.

In Canada you’ve been able to send money to people for 15 years just by knowing their email address. You also set a security question. I also had a debit card I could use in most stores almost 30 years ago.

I was shocked as a young adult when I could travel in the US and use my debit card to get money at almost any atm, yet Americans had to sometimes seek out the correct ATM, even in their country.

I was shocked again in Japan when I moved here ten years ago when online banking was useless, transfers took up to 3 days, and most of the bank’s atms closed at 5 or 6pm. Oddly enough I could always find some atm open 24 hours that worked with my Canadian debit card, even when I could not find an atm open that worked with my Japan Post bank debit card. Those problems are all solved now, but it’s no wonder that there are now 30+ competing digital payment systems in Japan vs just a few in Canada. You also have to still really go out of your way when choosing a bank to make sure that your debit card will work overseas.

The original Canadian system is called Interac, and it’s nice that everyone has been able to use it for 30+ Years. I’ve never heard of anyone being blacklisted due to an error, like you hear about with PayPal and the other things that have come since then.

Re: Apple Cash

#114

Post by samcrawford »

x3ro wrote: post #90
basisword wrote: post #88

I find it odd things like this, Venmo, Square cash even need to exist. There’s a reason none of them get used much (or even exist) outside the US. Just fix banking in the US and they problems they solve disappear. In the UK (and the EU I believe too) bank transfers and instant and free. Digital banks like Monzo make it even easier (through contact syncing, better UI). Third party apps need not get involved.

It is true that bank transfers are fast, instant most of the time these days. However, when people want to quickly send me money, they still usually ask for paypal, simply because it’s easier to tell someone a nickname or email address than my IBAN. not that this is an unsolvable issue, just sharing my experience from Germany.

My experience with Paypal is the opposite. On multiple occasions I've had someone send me money on Paypal, but then it gets held up in checks and verification for 2-4 weeks, during which time I cannot access it. Sometimes it is instant though. There seems to be no pattern to it. This lack of certainty discourages me from using Paypal to receive payments in the future as I now consider it as a risky, slow, last-resort option.

Re: Apple Cash

#115

Post by technothrasher »

pkulak wrote: post #9

Really silly and not related, but I've tried half a dozen of these things for managing my kid's allowance and general spending, and they have all been a PITA. Either my kids can't sign up without a drivers license and credit check, or they can't send money to me or between themselves, or something else entirely. Maybe Apple has fixed this, but I do remember also trying Cash, and there was some deal breaker for my use…

I use a Capital One MONEY account for my kid. It's a pretty standard fee free checking account for him (minus the actual paper checks) but it allows me to see what he's doing, add/remove money, and turn his debit card on/off as I wish.

Re: Apple Cash

#117

Post by sascha_sl »

basisword wrote: post #88

I find it odd things like this, Venmo, Square cash even need to exist. There’s a reason none of them get used much (or even exist) outside the US. Just fix banking in the US and they problems they solve disappear. In the UK (and the EU I believe too) bank transfers and instant and free. Digital banks like Monzo make it even easier (through contact syncing, better UI). Third party apps need not get involved.

Instant SEPA is still a bit of a luxury feature adopted mostly by fintechs, at least the sending side.

Re: Apple Cash

#118

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

ahoka wrote: post #103
l33tman wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Sweden there is a single cross-platform payment app since >10 yrs called Swish which all the banks are connected to, and you transfer money by entering the recipients mobile phone number and the amount. No fees and the transfer is instant. I guess it's luck that some countries happened to get the banks to agree to something like this at the particular time when the technology needed to support it just had matured…

Swish is just another proprietary solution though along with BankID. And BankID basically requires residency in Sweden (and much more), so it's not something you can install while visiting to pay at flea markets. Their only appeal is that they are ubiquitous.

I lived in Sweden as a resident for a period of time (less than the amount you are required to get a personnumber, one of the requirements for BankID) and sometimes not having Swish was a real hassle. Oftentimes it was with smaller mom-and-pop shops whose primary method of accepting payment was Swish. Carrying cash usually solved the problem, but not always. Transferring money to and from friends was also more difficult, either cash or Transferwise were used instead.

Even if I had been able to get a personnumber getting a BankID would have also been a real hassle - by law I believe Swedish banks have to grant me an account if I reside there and have a personnumber but as a US citizen they go out of their way to make it as difficult as possible due to the extremely onerous requirements that US requires foreign bank accounts comply with.

Re: Apple Cash

#119

Post by vivegi »

In India, the coalescing of payments around the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)'s payment network and standard called Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has been a gamechanger. Bank consumers can create virtual addresses that they can give to any individual or entity and use it for sending / receiving money. The recipient can be a customer of any bank, not necessarily theirs. As long as the bank is on the NPCI backbone (almost all banks are), the transaction is safe, secure and seamless. At the moment, there are no fees for using UPI and the transaction limit is Rs. 200,000 (approx. USD 2500), so a vast majority of small ticket purchases can be done electronically. The transaction volume statistics at NPCI is pretty impressive. https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/product-statistics

Re: Apple Cash

#120

Post by andylynch »

basisword wrote: post #97
x3ro wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true that bank transfers are fast, instant most of the time these days. However, when people want to quickly send me money, they still usually ask for paypal, simply because it’s easier to tell someone a nickname or email address than my IBAN. not that this is an unsolvable issue, just sharing my experience from Germany.

Interesting. In the UK we just need to share account number and sort code. These are quite easy to remember in your head. IBAN would complicate things. Is IBAN always required or only for cross-border transfers?

You can use mobile phone numbers here too (though admittedly UK account numbers are easy enough most people just use those )
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