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

Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 203 posts

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#181

Post by hvidgaard »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #84

The US is so archaic in banking I'm not surprised that it takes Apple to do something about it, a shame. I'm still sending a paper check to the landlord every month, ha! What is this, the 70's? The rest of the world already has direct, often immediate, free money transfers a few clicks away, and for a long time. We should focus there, rather than inserting more middle-men. When I was in New Zealand, we even paid for…

In Denmark we have MobilePay and Swipp. The former works with your phone number and credit card, and the latter works with your phone number and bank account. When you want to send money, you send it to the receivers phone number and they can see it seconds later in the app, and on the account shortly after. It's really simple, though I probably would use it to pay for rent.

For payment between parties we have multiple systems. For one time payments we have FIK (a Danish way to request and pay between banks), for recurring payments we have "Betalings Service" which is basically an automated version of FIK, and lately automatic CC billing. I don't even think I can write checks anymore. I can request one from the bank for a fee, but I've done that exactly once in the last 15 years, when I bought my car.

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#182

Post by wiredfool »

jobu wrote: post #165
aptwebapps wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For domestic transfers, under what circumstances do people use wire instead of ACH transfers? I've only used wire transfers for international purposes.

Only time I've had to wire money was for the downpayment on a house. Apparently there's a limit to how much you can send over ACH (at least with some banks).

The difference is reversibility.

ACH never settles, it just hasn't returned yet. There's a 60 day window for ordinary not authed returns, and even past that in cases of fraud. ACH is also push or pull, you can push money or the person you're paying can pull. (Or paychecks. A lot of paychecks are run over ACH). There are limits on ACH, depending on what you're doing its anywhere from 2.5k to 25k to $10^8.

Wires are nearly irreversible. Once you send the money, it's Gone. So the banks have a lot more documentation that they do for retail customers. Wires are push only.

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#183

Post by wiwa »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #123
habosa wrote: post #95

I'll use Venmo until they pry it from my hands, it's one of the most life-transforming services I have ever used. I'll just repost my comment from the last Venmo thread here: ========================================= Venmo was started by UPenn alums so it was popular among my friends long before it was a phenomenon (one of my good friends interned there and wrote the BlackBerry app). I used to use it exclusively by S…

Venmo still takes several days to transfer the money to your account, and you have to remember to request the funds—they don't even begin the transfer process until you do that. It would literally be faster to write your friend a check. We need instant cash transfers in the United States, like the rest of the world has.

I made this Android app to provide instant check transfers off the phone screen:

www.getlightcheck.com

Unfortunately most banks don't support it with their image deposit apps, but in theory, it would be a practicable "check replacement" instead of Venmo. Maybe if enough people want to use it the banks would adjust their photo-deposit apps to accept checks from it.

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#184

Post by alastair »

seekingcharlie wrote: post #108
mixmastamyk wrote: post #84

The US is so archaic in banking I'm not surprised that it takes Apple to do something about it, a shame. I'm still sending a paper check to the landlord every month, ha! What is this, the 70's? The rest of the world already has direct, often immediate, free money transfers a few clicks away, and for a long time. We should focus there, rather than inserting more middle-men. When I was in New Zealand, we even paid for…

This still astounds me. I'm Australian but also hold a US account. The difference in ease between the two is insane. I cannot believe how difficult it is to simply wire money from a US bank account. In Australia, you can make a free transfer entirely from web/app and it will be received, often the next day. It's no wonder why Paypal/Venmo are so huge in the US...

FYI the Australian Payments Clearing Association is building a new payments platform to enable instant transfers and is expected to be operational by the second half of 2017:

http://www.apca.com.au/about-payments/future-of-payments/new...

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#185

Post by Natanael_L »

hvidgaard wrote: post #181
mixmastamyk wrote: post #84

The US is so archaic in banking I'm not surprised that it takes Apple to do something about it, a shame. I'm still sending a paper check to the landlord every month, ha! What is this, the 70's? The rest of the world already has direct, often immediate, free money transfers a few clicks away, and for a long time. We should focus there, rather than inserting more middle-men. When I was in New Zealand, we even paid for…

In Denmark we have MobilePay and Swipp. The former works with your phone number and credit card, and the latter works with your phone number and bank account. When you want to send money, you send it to the receivers phone number and they can see it seconds later in the app, and on the account shortly after. It's really simple, though I probably would use it to pay for rent. For payment between parties we have multip…

In Sweden we have Swish (also linked to your phone number and bank account) and a bunch of other options.

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#186

Post by pgwhalen »

alexforster wrote: post #154
habosa wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Venmo cashout transfers take How does the rest of the world manage instant transfers? I thought the ACH method was still in use not because we're technologically slow (see: High Frequency Trading) but because it saves a huge amount of coordination to sum up net inter-bank transfers at the end of the day rather than constantly shuffling money around due to the fact that the net is often very small.

> How does the rest of the world manage instant transfers? The same way the US stock markets can do 5 billion trades per month in realtime, with technology: technology that costs money, wipes out a major investment revenue stream, and necessitates cooperation between competitors. Does it surprise anyone that the EU pulled this off and the US is the farthest behind?

To be fair, the actual transfer of money between stock market participants is no faster than it is for personal bank accounts.

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#187

Post by jackgavigan »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #84

The US is so archaic in banking I'm not surprised that it takes Apple to do something about it, a shame. I'm still sending a paper check to the landlord every month, ha! What is this, the 70's? The rest of the world already has direct, often immediate, free money transfers a few clicks away, and for a long time. We should focus there, rather than inserting more middle-men. When I was in New Zealand, we even paid for…

In the UK, we have an industry-wide "Faster Payments"[1] system that allows for inter-bank transfers in less than an hour. The majority of banks also support Paym[2], which links a bank account to your mobile phone number, so people can send money to your mobile and it lands in your bank account.

Recently, the government decided that an Open Banking API Standard would be a good idea, so work has begun on figuring out how to deliver that.[3]

1: http://www.fasterpayments.org.uk

2: http://www.paym.co.uk

3: http://theodi.org/news/open-banking-working-group-uk-experts...

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#188

Post by lostlogin »

jahewson wrote: post #127
lobster_johnson wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chase has "QuickPay", where you just enter the recipient's info, and the transfer is near-instantaneous. Only works with other Chase customers, however. Other banks have similar systems.

My experience with Chase "quick" pay is that the money disappears for several days and occasionally never reaches the recipient.

Well that is alarming.

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#189

Post by lostlogin »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #84

The US is so archaic in banking I'm not surprised that it takes Apple to do something about it, a shame. I'm still sending a paper check to the landlord every month, ha! What is this, the 70's? The rest of the world already has direct, often immediate, free money transfers a few clicks away, and for a long time. We should focus there, rather than inserting more middle-men. When I was in New Zealand, we even paid for…

It's interesting how fast you can abandon cash when you have decent alternatives. Most NZ banks support paying people to their cell phone number too, with a URL to follow to get the money. It's not that clunky either which is surprising to me (given how long decent mobile apps have taken).

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#190

Post by INTPenis »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #84

The US is so archaic in banking I'm not surprised that it takes Apple to do something about it, a shame. I'm still sending a paper check to the landlord every month, ha! What is this, the 70's? The rest of the world already has direct, often immediate, free money transfers a few clicks away, and for a long time. We should focus there, rather than inserting more middle-men. When I was in New Zealand, we even paid for…

Others have already pointed out that we already have the option Apple is developing in Denmark and Sweden.

But I also had to add that I haven't received a paper bill in several years. It used to be that bills were delivered in paper form in my mailbox every month but now I just get a notification from my bank app when I have bills and I can pay them from anywhere with my mobile phone.

Post reply on HN