61–70 of 81 posts
The article characterized healthcare as an anticipated future front, but US insurers have been required to offer ACH payments since 2014. https://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Administrative-...
As my anecdata: I work in the healthcare industry. In a typical month we send out less than a third of our total moneys (by amount, not payment) with ACH. Checks are de facto, at least from our POV.
I was listening to a podcast a few weeks ago (Planet Money) and was genuinlely shocked at how poor the US payments network is in relation to here in the UK. Most bank transactions here complete within 2 hours (faster payments service) and are completely free.
I could not believe my eyes when I saw that a transfer (it's called a "wire transfer") will cost me $35 on the sending side, and the receiver will pay another $25. Then you need the bizarre routing numbers which banks bizarrely obfuscate for even more bizarre reasons and which are easy to get wrong because there is no checksum. And then it takes days. No wonder when anything even slightly better appears, people jump…
Wire transfers are different than ACH transfers. Wire transfers cost money and take less than one business day. ACH transfers are inexpensive* and generally take in the ballpark of five business days.
* They are inexpensive for the bank. At banks that treat their customers fairly, they're generally free because the cost accounting is generally more than the cost of performing the transfer. At shitty banks, (BofA, Wells Fargo, etc) they're arbitrarily expensive.
Does anyone know what Banks and/or services use same-day ACH? The article says same-day volume was up to $160B last year, but I've yet to see anything faster than next-day ACH.
Does ACH cost? I know in the UK we have faster payments, it usually shows up a few seconds later in the target account, and it's free. I've mostly stopped using paypal as a result.
ACH is not a service directly exposed to consumers. Instead it is the backend for a lot of other services. It backs direct deposit, paying with "electronic cheque", and most interbank-bank consumer transfers, broker-to-bank transfers, and even many service-to-consumer transfers. For example, when you withdraw money from paypal in the US, it would normally be via an ACH transfer to your bank account. ACH transfers are…
Used to take a few days until Faster Payments got implemented, free of charge and dates from 1968 best I can tell.
The Zelle systems don’t seem to allow periodic payments and the maximum amount is well below that needed to make a Bay Area rent payment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I would also expect with healthcare reform for healthcare related payments to decline. In general, more people covered by public and/or private insurance means more insurer to provider payments.
More total dollar amount, lower quantity of payments, no? As you're cutting out all of the admin overhead, billing here and there, everywhere.
Server just got slashdotted. Anyone have a cached link?
Wayback machine has it:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190404230059/http://www.digita...
I was listening to a podcast a few weeks ago (Planet Money) and was genuinlely shocked at how poor the US payments network is in relation to here in the UK. Most bank transactions here complete within 2 hours (faster payments service) and are completely free.
[0] : https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/04/229224964/epis...
I was listening to a podcast a few weeks ago (Planet Money) and was genuinlely shocked at how poor the US payments network is in relation to here in the UK. Most bank transactions here complete within 2 hours (faster payments service) and are completely free.
I'm pretty sure a bunch of years ago Planet Money had a podcast where they just marveled at someone in the UK sending their daughter in NYC enough to buy a pint in realtime. I think they've reported on ACH a few times each year and there never seems to be any incentive (from the group maintaining ACH) to improve it. What's worse is that it not only takes a few days, I often don't see it show up until a few days after…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
ACH is not a service directly exposed to consumers. Instead it is the backend for a lot of other services. It backs direct deposit, paying with "electronic cheque", and most interbank-bank consumer transfers, broker-to-bank transfers, and even many service-to-consumer transfers. For example, when you withdraw money from paypal in the US, it would normally be via an ACH transfer to your bank account. ACH transfers are…
Living in the US I miss the UK’s standing order system where you can instruct your bank to periodically transfer funds without risk of a cheque getting delayed or lost in the post (frequent occurrence with billpay.) Used to take a few days until Faster Payments got implemented, free of charge and dates from 1968 best I can tell. The Zelle systems don’t seem to allow periodic payments and the maximum amount is well be…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm pretty sure a bunch of years ago Planet Money had a podcast where they just marveled at someone in the UK sending their daughter in NYC enough to buy a pint in realtime. I think they've reported on ACH a few times each year and there never seems to be any incentive (from the group maintaining ACH) to improve it. What's worse is that it not only takes a few days, I often don't see it show up until a few days after…
At the risk of repeating myself, it's in the epilogue of the same episode as OP: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19579575