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Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

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Re: Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

#281

Post by r00fus »

explodingwaffle wrote: post #44
gnicholas wrote: post #13

When my older relatives wanted to send money to family/friends, I used to recommend Zelle, which was better than the never-heard-of-it apps they were considering. But with all the problems I keep hearing about Zelle, they're off the list. Most of them have iPhones and so I just tell them to send cash via Messages/Apple Cash. I don't know how reversible that sort of thing is, in the case of fraud, but as long as they…

Brit here- I usually send money to friends and family using bank transfers with internet banking- it’s instant, there’s no fee (AFAIK) and all you need are someone’s account number, and sort code, which everyone has. Is this just not an option in the states? It’s insane to me that y’all use (need??) third party apps for something as simple as sending money around.

Yeah, the USA is way behind many other nations here. Exercise left for reader as to why.

Re: Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

#282

Post by basch »

astrange wrote: post #187
basch wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wont be a popular answer here but Facebook Pay now Meta Pay is a great product. It is instant, as in, you can send someone standing in front of an ATM money, and they can pull the money out seconds later. Not pending, but completed deposits. For free. It is the "it just works" way to move money between peoples debit cards in the US. It is rock solid, a large network of us use it all the time, and it is significant…

PayPal/Venmo/Apple Cash also support instant transfers through this method - basically it just charges a negative amount to your debit card. It's not always free though, and most people don't actually need "instant" unless they're standing in front of an ATM.

is it free anywhere else?

Re: Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

#283

Post by throw7 »

astrange wrote: post #210
ars wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is this just not an option in the states? They are working on it: https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/about.... should be available this year. Once it's up Zelle, Cashapp, etc will not be needed anymore.

FedNow is no different from Zelle; it seems to me banks could still mess it up, and most of the complaints here (that you can't reverse a transaction you sent) would still apply to it, since that's kind of the point.

I would wait and see. It's not like they're ignoring fraud management:

https://www.pymnts.com/news/payment-methods/2022/fednow-pilo...

"FedNow Service features will help participating financial institutions conduct investigations and provide returned funds connected to fraud and errors. Beyond mitigating fraud through the design of the service, Stanescu noted that the Fed is exploring opportunities to collaborate with the industry on consumer education and outreach programs to help identify and prevent scams and promote strong enrollment and authentication processes. In the meantime, the value proposition inherent in irrevocability remains intact: receivers have protection and a guarantee that good funds have hit their account and can be used immediately."

Re: Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

#284

Post by aeturnum »

jlawson wrote: post #145
aeturnum wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, people are not robots, but I think it's pretty obvious people do work that way. Famously, one of the factors in the collapse of the USSR was people realizing society was breaking and starting to work with grey market or criminal groups. You can search for the impact on crime of basically ANY social support program (sanctuary cities[1], substance abuse treatment[2], SNAP[3]) and they all reduce crime. How peop…

This is intuitive but wrong; the balance of evidence is that poverty does not drive people to crime. During economic contractions in the west for example, crime does not spike. 2008, or even the great depression: No crime jump. In the past in the west, when everyone was much poorer (1960's back to 19th century) crime was often substantially lower even than now. We're talking 1930's slums here. Poverty correlates with…

It's not that poverty causes all crime. Wealthy people commit different crimes than poor people. [1]

You bring up the 2008 recession, but the poverty rate, rose from ~12% to ~15%[2]. A meaningful but not earth-moving change. Median wages did not decrease [3], suggesting that the rise in poverty would be from job loss, which has not been shown to have a simplistic, direct relationship to crime [4]. The fact that poverty is not the most important factor in crime does not mean it is not a factor.

That is all to say - poverty (and in a wider sense forms of desperation) are not the sole force driving crime, but they are a force for certain crimes. Again, it's very reliable that you can reduce crime with better social support. That's not to say that crime == poverty, just that it's one of many factors that influence people.

[1] https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-socialproblems/chapte...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/200463/us-poverty-rate-s...

[3] https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/private/pdf/154286/...

[4] https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/unemploy...

Re: Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

#285

Post by Throwaway69294 »

astrange wrote: post #206
Throwaway69294 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about the US, but in Europe they would actually refund me if my CC was stolen. It's part of my standard insurance package.

US credit card protections are better than Europe's. Debit cards are somewhat less protected than credit though.

Yes I thought so. This sounded really weird.

You're right about the debit cards. But "premium" accounts offered by banks often have insurance for these too (you get that for free if you make around 2x average wage).

Re: Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

#286

Post by danielsju6 »

eclipxe wrote: post #114
sschueller wrote: post #111

I don't understand why overdraft hasn't been outlawed. It's literally a tax on you if you make one tiny mistake or your bank make a mistake. If I dont have the money block the transaction and offer a line of credit with specific apr for those that want to be able to overdraft.

That's fairly common, most banks have "overdraft protection" that works exactly how you described.

Then they charge $30 to reject the transaction, another $30 when you go "odd and try to swipe again", then extra money because you didn't have the $30 to cover the fee in your account, then recursively until you're $1200 in the hole and they're refusing to cover it.

Re: Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

#287

Post by dsfyu404ed »

astrange wrote: post #170
nibbleshifter wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A month or so of salary in cash at home, and some "hard assets" is a good hedge.

Under what situation could that possibly be useful where all society hasn't collapsed? You're not going to lose access to your bank account because the bank failed; the FDIC handles that. It just moves to a different bank over the weekend. Locked out because Chexsystems thinks you're a financial criminal is more in the direction of possible.

> Under what situation could that possibly be useful where all society hasn't collapsed?

In a natural disaster type situation it could easily be the difference between being able to get what you need stay put the whole time or running out of some supply you didn't think you'd need and having to evacuate half way through the follow-on mess and losing quite a bit to looters and/or the environment.

The other person who replied mentioned more mundane stuff.

Re: Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

#288

Post by DennisP »

snotrockets wrote: post #260
DennisP wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wire transfers aren't reversible if you're not quick enough to do it before the money transfers out of the country. Home purchases and business wires have both seen over a billion dollars in wire fraud annually, just in the US. https://www.rocketmortgage.com/learn/mortgage-wire-fraud https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/08/3...

Wire transfers are also reversible. It may not be easy or cheap to do so, but it is possible (the Citigroup $500mm mispayment is a great example: the error was done August 2020, and Citigroup are still working to undo it, at an expense to them. I'm certain it'll take them a few more months, and God only knows how many more billable hours at the very least).

In practice for more common fraud cases, we're seeing billions of dollars actually lost. Maybe the expense of retrieval would be higher than the value. Or it could be that the perps simply convert the money to cash, at which point it's gone. That's basically what happened to the $81 million fraudulently transferred from Bangladesh's account with the NY Fed:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/03/magazine/mone...

Re: Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

#290

Post by r00fus »

astrange wrote: post #210
ars wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is this just not an option in the states? They are working on it: https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/about.... should be available this year. Once it's up Zelle, Cashapp, etc will not be needed anymore.

FedNow is no different from Zelle; it seems to me banks could still mess it up, and most of the complaints here (that you can't reverse a transaction you sent) would still apply to it, since that's kind of the point.

I disagree - it seems a lot more like SEPA in Europe. The non-reversibility seems similar to SEPA fast transactions (ie, similar to fedwire) as well.

The fact that they're using ISO20222 is also a clue that they're probably picking up best-practice from European and Asian networks.

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