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Bank transfers as a payment method (2021)

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Re: Bank transfers as a payment method (2021)

#71

Post by smcf »

latchkey wrote: post #61
smcf wrote: post #35

Didn't get a mention in the article but Singapore's PayNow is magical. Direct bank-to-bank transfers that operate instantly 24/7, and for free. QR code-based so it's not uncommon to pay at retail outlets with this method; some shops will only accept PayNow or cash, because they're free. You can also pay directly to someone's NRIC (national ID number) or mobile number so you don't have to tack in their bank details or…

What is the transaction size limit though?

S$200,000 (~US$150,000) per transaction in principle; some banks impose lower limits.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method (2021)

#72

Post by amanzi »

dyates wrote: post #22

As a South African, it's weird seeing this presented as a strange/futuristic idea. I pay most of my bills through bank transfers and it's the standard way for two people with bank accounts to send money to each other. As long as you know someone's bank and account number, you can send them money. All local online retailers, investment brokers, etc, support bank transfers, with some[1] even providing discounts for pay…

Everything you've said here applies to New Zealand too. Most of the banks maintain a register of businesses' bank account details so you usually don't even need to know their account number to make a payment - you can just search up the business name when you're making the transaction.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method (2021)

#73

Post by clord »

emptybits wrote: post #53
AlexandrB wrote: post #7

Would be interesting to know how Canada's Interac e-transfers[1] compare to the Indian or Japanese systems. Probably the biggest inconvenience of Canada's system it the need to use an email address as the destination. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interac_e-Transfer

For all of Canada's chartered banking bureaucracy and lack of customer empathy ... I have to say that our e-transfer system is pretty amazing. For business or personal, one-off or regular transfers. It just works.

I always have an awkward delay with interac transfers when doing in-person. like "so, what do you think of those jays" bla bla for several minutes. Works great when the transaction is not 100% live though.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method (2021)

#74

Post by raincom »

Analemma_ wrote: post #62
candiddevmike wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't it be setup in a way where people don't have to build good products on top of it? Why leave room for rent seeking?

FedNow is infrastructure for settling payments between banks. It's replacing ACH, which is really old and slow to settle. In computing terms, think of FedNow as something like TCP: it's very low in the OSI hierarchy and not meant to be used directly by users. The hope is that it will enable nicer applications to be built on top of it, things which are not really possible to build on top of ACH, but it is not a paymen…

Well, there is Real Time Payments, as it is called RTP by The Clearing House. (RTP is almost like FedNow.) However, The Clearing House is owned by a small number of banks. That's why only big banks use RTP. I heard about 50 banks use RTP, when 10000 financial institutions exist in US. This is also one of the reasons why majority of credit unions don't offer Zelle, as the latter is owned by top banks.

The bigger culprit is private entities controlling infrastructure, and these entities want their tax.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method (2021)

#75

Post by xboxnolifes »

cpursley wrote: post #66
zubairshaik wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of banks are competing with Venmo and Cashapp. They use Zelle[1], it's zero-fee and included in most bank apps already. But it's not intended for business payments like Stripe or PayPal, or Venmo for business. [1] https://www.zellepay.com/get-started

Both of those suck hugely vs Asian bank apps. You can just quickly and instantly send money by entering somebodies phone number. And it’s built into all the banking apps.

> You can just quickly and instantly send money by entering somebodies phone number. And it’s built into all the banking apps

That's how zelle works as well, with the exception that it's probably not built into every banking app, considering the number of US banks.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method (2021)

#76

Post by linsomniac »

AtNightWeCode wrote: post #52

Why Americans love credit cards so much is a mystery. In Europe debit cards have been the way to go for a long time. Most countries in Europe also have direct payments through mobile apps.

Credit cards provide protections that debit cards do not, in particular related to skimming-adjacent losses. Europeans: Realize that chip-based transactions are relatively new in the USA, and we still have places that do not have chip-enabled POS (primarily I've seen it lacking at car washes, but it was only in the last couple years that my gas station started, allegedly, doing chip -- it still takes the whole card AND asks you to remove it quickly).

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method (2021)

#77

Post by patmcc »

godelski wrote: post #23

I've always wondered why big banks don't implement a lot more technologies, and I guess this gets to some of it. But it does seem like banks would have the incentives to kill services like Venmo and Stripe overnight. Like why are there not clear and straightforward banking APIs that let me create virtual cards and why doesn't my app let me just transfer money directly to my friend's bank account (I get global being a…

There's a few big problems, at least on the "friend-to-friend" transfer.

1) You kinda need everybody on board. The biggest banks in the US have something like 5% market share, so it's not just 3 companies you need to get on the same page. This probably means it needs to be mandated from above. Any 1 bank could probably throw together an easy account-to-account transfer for other customers at the same bank without too much trouble, but inter-bank? Yikes.

2) 90% of the institutions are slow and conservative. Even if they agree this is a good idea, it's a couple years of meetings and gathering requirements, then a couple more to implement.

3) You can either have instant transfers or you can have reversibility, you can't really have both. People want the first...until they (desperately) want the second. This becomes a support nightmare for banks. Now, you limit this if you have really good security (password requirements, 2FA, transaction limits, recipient verification, risk analysis)...but all that needs to be in place first, so we're back at point 2.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method (2021)

#78

Post by numpad0 »

dyates wrote: post #22

As a South African, it's weird seeing this presented as a strange/futuristic idea. I pay most of my bills through bank transfers and it's the standard way for two people with bank accounts to send money to each other. As long as you know someone's bank and account number, you can send them money. All local online retailers, investment brokers, etc, support bank transfers, with some[1] even providing discounts for pay…

Not all banking systems are realtime. Some are batch processed at each X hour marks or during weekday nights and updated 9AM, on literal mainframe computers somewhere running COBOL programming. It's fine for sending a plush to a friend(literally did recently) but not for a lunch takeout and so where that's common it'll be strange.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method (2021)

#79

Post by eweise »

raincom wrote: post #45
godelski wrote: post #23

I've always wondered why big banks don't implement a lot more technologies, and I guess this gets to some of it. But it does seem like banks would have the incentives to kill services like Venmo and Stripe overnight. Like why are there not clear and straightforward banking APIs that let me create virtual cards and why doesn't my app let me just transfer money directly to my friend's bank account (I get global being a…

I worked for a couple of banks. The older the bank is, the difficult it is to 'implement a lot more technologies'. They have the old COBOL codebase running on mainframes from 70's, then a lot of Java, COBRA interfaces that deal with this ancient, but reliable COBOL in the backend. Who is going to implement these technologies 'without being responsible for failures'? Modern management is all about taking credit for su…

fintechs could provide those service using modern tech and just have an omnibus account at the bank.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method (2021)

#80

Post by Waterluvian »

jayaura wrote: post #63
ix-ix wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada has that too, it's great!

Did you mean interac? If not, could you provide more context please?

Probably Interac E-Transfer, yeah. I can’t think of any other. I use it all the time. Free. You send it to an email address, and then the recipient accesses it through their bank account with the password you gave them. Max $3000. Can sometimes take 10 mins to appear so it’s not great if you’re standing there trying to buy an CX990 elliptical from someone…
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