Bank transfers as a payment method • Hacker News Board

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#231

Post by ThrowAwayIRUK » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

vesinisa wrote: post #106

elric wrote: post #75

The 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…

> Most banks charge a hefty fee for an instant payment (mine charges €1.25). Interesting. In my country (Finland) all banks that have joined the TIPS (SEPA Instant Settlement) always use it automatically if the destination bank supports it as well - at no extra charge to the account holder of course. Are you sure you are talking about TIPS / SCT Inst payments? Either way, your bank is not allowed to charge extra fees…

Interesting!

So, TIPS is just one of the available clearing mechanisms available for the SEPA Inst scheme. (The other one is RT1, which is live a little bit longer)

Currently, there is no "regulatory forced" interoperability between RT1 and TIPS, though the 4CB are discussing it. (Esp. since RT1 is a private clearing mechanism, while TIPS is the one operated by the 4CB)

And, regarding fee: You are wrong - depending on the local jurisdiction (esp. consumer rights), a bank may for sure charge for processing SEPA SCT Instant messages. Over here, SEPA Instant transactions are around 0,50EUR - 1,00EUR, currently; some are also offering them for free.

DISCLAIMER: Lead Payment Engineer at an European Challenger Bank, i'm implementing that stuff in the backend, i'm mainly talking to our central bank.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#232

Post by zimbatm » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

elric wrote: post #75

The 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…

And with 2.0 banks like Monzo, the account holder gets notified of the Direct Debit setup, how much is likely to be debited, and can easily cancel it from the app. That reduces the risk of fraud quite a lot.

In exchange, it saves a lot of time both for the customer and utility provider as the risks of mistakes are reduced considerably. Invoices get paid on time.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#233

Post by sc11 » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:16 PM UTC

ThrowAwayIRUK wrote: post #224

sc11 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Landlords benefit from it because it makes it harder for your to lower your rent in case there are issues with the place that warrant it. If they can withdraw the ren…

Not exactly: You could sign a contract with your landlord, then revoke the so called "SEPA mandate" afterwards and you can forcibly switch to "manual payment" each month, since the SEPA mandate is not necessarily required or a "legally-necessary intrinsic component of the contract" (check for example: https://deutschesmietrecht.de/mietvertrag/662-mietzahlung-ei... ) Tough, depends on which type of relation you want t…

True, that works as well.

Either way as a tenant it's best to do manual payments (even if they're automated on your end) each month so that lowering rent, if necessary, is straightforward.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#234

Post by jokethrowaway » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:17 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #163

Another article describing what sounds like science fiction in the US but is established in a lot of the rest of the world? Perhaps I’m misunderstanding the article but when I purchase stuff online the checkout options are “bank transfer”, “credit card” or “invoice”, with the direct bank transfer often being the default choice these days.

In which country and what are you buying?

In my experience (UK) the only services accepting bank transfers are financial institutions (Coinbase, Revolut). Most stores prefer to pay CC fees and have a smoother checkout experience, probably to grab those extra % points of customer converting. A lot of e-commerces online even offer Paypal (even more ridiculous fees and infinite hassles for sellers) just because it's more user friendly and can help conversions a bit more.

A couple of years ago, I even opened 2 cash isa saving account for 20k each paying by credit card because that was the only option the bank accepted.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#235

Post by homelessgolden » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:24 PM UTC

UPI has been truly revolutionary for me here (in a mid sized city in India). I almost do not remember using Cash from the time the Pandemic started. 5 Years ago if someone had told me I could live Cash free for 18 months I would have thought that future is decades away in here. One point I would like to add is the recent changes with UPI Autopay have significantly reduced the friction of recurring payments. It is not made completely friction less as the India financial regulators believe that some friction in recurring payments flow is better for consumers even if it is worse for business.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#236

Post by sildur » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:25 PM UTC

elric wrote: post #75

The 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…

Revolut offers free SEPA instant payments.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#237

Post by AnssiH » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

jkirsteins wrote: post #87

elric wrote: post #75

The 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…

I think it's less "factually incorrect" and more "nuanced and incomplete". As a European that moved between countries, I was very surprised when I learned that SEPA allows a "pull" mechanism even exists. I lived 30 years in Latvia without knowing this is a feature in SEPA because every single payment is a "push" mechanism. I'm not sure if banks can turn this feature off, or if it just culturally never gained traction…

> I'm not sure if banks can turn this feature off, or if it just culturally never gained traction.

Yes, the accounts in my bank (in Finland) default to SEPA Direct Debit off.

For recurring utility payments etc. we instead use Finvoice e-invoicing (https://www.finanssiala.fi/en/topics/finvoice-standard/). The customer enables e-invoices on a per-issuer basis directly from their bank web interface, with an option for auto-pay and payment limits. The payments are processed as regular SEPA payments. The e-invoice goes directly to customer's bank, replacing paper/e-mail invoices.

For paying one-time online purchases the user is redirected to their bank to authorize a one-time SEPA transfer (other non-SEPA payment methods like cards and MobilePay are common, too).

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#238

Post by fxtentacle » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

ThrowAwayIRUK wrote: post #219

fxtentacle wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agree. In Germany we have a widely used push mechanism (giropay) where you approve the online payment using an app or a dedicated hardware device. It's instant, free for buyer and seller, push, and requires explicit consent for each transfer from the buyer. It's supported by all major electronics stores. The only exception is Amazon who will do a SEPA pull instead. But there the bank grants you 6 weeks to cance…

Not correct: Giropay does in fact include fees, though these are usually covered by the seller. (check for example: https://www.unternehmerportal.info/giropay/ ) DISCLAIMER: Lead Payment Engineer at an European Challenger Bank, i'm implementing that stuff in the backend, i'm mainly talking to our central bank.

I'm honestly surprised. I've been using it as the seller with a Deutsche Bank business account for a few years now and I never paid any per-transaction fees.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#239

Post by AnssiH » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

ThrowAwayIRUK wrote: post #231

vesinisa wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most banks charge a hefty fee for an instant payment (mine charges €1.25). Interesting. In my country (Finland) all banks that have joined the TIPS (SEPA Instant Settlement) always use it automatically if the destination bank supports it as well - at no extra charge to the account holder of course. Are you sure you are talking about TIPS / SCT Inst payments? Either way, your bank is not allowed to charge extra fees…

Interesting! So, TIPS is just one of the available clearing mechanisms available for the SEPA Inst scheme. (The other one is RT1, which is live a little bit longer) Currently, there is no "regulatory forced" interoperability between RT1 and TIPS, though the 4CB are discussing it. (Esp. since RT1 is a private clearing mechanism, while TIPS is the one operated by the 4CB) And, regarding fee: You are wrong - depending o…

> And, regarding fee: You are wrong - depending on the local jurisdiction (esp. consumer rights), a bank may for sure charge for processing SEPA SCT Instant messages.

They didn't say that banks cannot charge for SCT Instant.

They said that banks can't charge more for international than they do for domestic.

Re: Bank transfers as a payment method

#240

Post by jacekm » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:40 PM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #28

When 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…

In Poland we have "Blik" [1]. It's immensely popular here, especially for online transactions and p2p transfers. Recently it started expansion to physical stores too. Seems to be quite similar to Swish.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blik_(payment)