I am a complete noob when it comes to this stuff, so forgive my ignorance, but doesn't the U.K already have all of these things? Is it a global leader in payments/banking/fintech or is the US just so far behind the rest of the world?
Bank transfers as a payment method
181–190 of 335 posts
Re: Bank transfers as a payment method
#182Interesting idea, but banks block this. My German bank until recently offered SEPA "instant" bank transfers, which make the cash appear on the receiver's end if both the sending and receiving bank support instant payments, for free. Recently they set the cost of instant payments to 1€ per transaction, without guarantees that it will complete as an instant transaction (depending on the receiver's side). Nobody will pay that money without the guarantee that the service bought is also rendered as such. On the web, waiting until the next clearing window completes, or the next bank business day, is not a payment option and has impact on the supply chain (when the merchant is confident enough to start the shipping process depends on if he has payment guarantee or not).
Re: Bank transfers as a payment method
#183When discussing Europe, you can't leave out the rise of mobile payments that work similar to India's UPI. For instance, in Sweden, "Swish"[0] has quickly taken over the market for casual payments, with free, instant, irreversible bank transfers between individuals using only the recipients phone number (or a QR code). They are a bunch of these systems, but currently they are all fractured into national systems, altho…
Not just casual payments.
I bought concert tickets last week, for almost 1000DKK (130€). I'd already entered my phone number, so paying by MobilePay was faster and easier. I usually use this if I have the option.
To use it, I pressed the MobilePay button on the website, pressed continue since my phone number is already present and correct. I unlocked my phone, and there was a notification waiting for me, with the amount and recipient stated. Fingerprint and swipe to approve.
I didn't need to type in any card details, or authenticate within the web browser. A 1000kr debit or credit card purchase would require me to enter my 20+ digit bank password, then do a similar process to unlock the phone for 2FA.
Re: Bank transfers as a payment method
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I make payments to the benelux, france, germany, spain and poland, and they go all over the push mechanism. Direct debit is for utilities, and that's about it. SEPA direct debit is a really really popular thing in Germany. Most utilities prefer (quite understandably) to pull from you instead of waiting for your transfer. Even landlords usually give you an agreement form to pull your rent out of your account. I got…
> I got used to that and recently tried to use a Polish bank account to pay on Amazon and surprisingly it didn't work. Amazon has sent me an automated email with a demand for a (push) transfer, sadly with added fee for the trouble. That might be a function of Poland not being in the euro zone. AFAIK SEPA Direct Debit is only for transfers in Euro. Even if you tried to use a Euro bank account in Poland, either your ba…
Yep, I did use an EUR account. You may be right about the lack of proper implementation.
Re: Bank transfers as a payment method
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Were old transactions grandfathered in, or did Germany implement the laws differently? Because I never had to do any authorization besides checking a box that I allow them to debit my account (either on paper or online). All my existing ones predate PSD2, though.
I'm fairly certain that SEPA mandate identifiers for recurring direct debits existed for years before PSD2. the way it works from the merchant perspective is you include the mandate identifier and a "type" to indicate if this is a first/recurring debit. The merchant only finds out about any problems some days (or months) later. How your bank presents (or doesn't present) a new SEPA mandate to you for approval is up t…
Neither Postbank, N26, nor the 2 Sparkasse branches I’ve been a customer of ever showed me anything for approval, so I guess it’s not very common.
Re: Bank transfers as a payment method
#186While I am by no means an expert, the implication of the article is "worldwide all bank transactions do not include enough metadata not enough auth security to make them machine processable, and while you can usually guess, that's either a liability or manual process(or both).
Basically across the globe, finance will benefit from the sort of basic metadata an undergraduate would put in their first draft.
Re: Bank transfers as a payment method
#187The article is factually incorrect when it talks about "SEPA payments", claiming they are a "pull" mechanism. What it probably meant to talk about, is SEPA Direct Debits -- where the counterpart charges your account, as opposed to you paying the counterpart. Given that these direct debit agreements are revokable at any point in time, I doubt the claims of very high fraud rate. A normal SEPA payment, is a "push" affai…
Not much of this applies to the UK. Faster Payments are almost ubiquitous here, and Authorized Push Payment fraud is a huge problem.
Re: Bank transfers as a payment method
#188In Southeast Asia, bank transfers as payment are part of the norm.
On our platform much more than half of all payments use bank transfers.
For Malaysia specifically this is facilitated by a nation-wide provider in which all banks must participate.
Because of that payment gateways can just integrate with that provider and not with individual banks.
The maximum fees are also set by the government. Transfers must be free for GIRO clearing and are very low for instant clearing and have been required to be waived since before covid.
The result of this is exceedingly positive in my opinion.
For instance one bank has a QR code that you can print (which contains basically just the account number) and you can pay in shops by scanning it. But besides that for random other things people will accept bank transfers. For instance, plumbers, AC repair, etc typically only take cash but in my experience will accept a bank transfer.
Re: Bank transfers as a payment method
#189In Germany we have a bank transfer based system called Giropay.
As part of the purchase process after picking Giropay as the payment method you get asked what bank you're at and then get redirected to a special version of the bank site (for my bank it is giropay.normal-bank-domain.de instead of the usual www.normal-bank-domain.de) where you log in using 2FA etc as usual and proceed with the bank transfer. Once you are finished you get redirected back to the merchant. In the background, Giropay confirms your payment with the merchant so that the merchant knows she will receive the money soon.
I think it's a good system. Not all banks participate in it, however.
Re: Bank transfers as a payment method
#190It'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.
You can probably get a volume discount on that 2.9% in the US. In Europe, Stripe starts at 1.4% + $0.3 for charging European cards.
Thats because the EU regulates fees.