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New York is proposing the creation of a 'public Venmo'

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Re: New York is proposing the creation of a 'public Venmo'

#61

Post by Tycho »

What about Venmo for beggars. Cities in the UK have foreign beggars camped outside every grocery store near the city centres. Locals do not know what to make of this. Are they desperately poor, or part of a scam to exploit people’s generosity? Do they make £10 per day or £200? What can the authorities do if there’s no law against it?

If there was a sort of begging venmo app where you could donate money, but it only worked up to a certain limit each day, then at least you’d know the public was not being exploited by professional beggars, and genuine beggars would see a bigger share of the public’s generosity.

It could even go further and show what the money gets spent on (in aggregate), so we could definitively answer debates like whether beggars spend all their money on drugs/alcohol.

Re: New York is proposing the creation of a 'public Venmo'

#62

Post by moralsupply »

xtian wrote: post #52
moralsupply wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not let consumers decide on what's better for them? What does centralized (and politicized) regulation do better than then free market?

You can argue for improvements to the political process, but public entities do many things better than the market. For example: the fire department, parks, utilities, roads, healthcare, education.

How do you know these services do better than the market given that they are monopolistic (as in: the government doesn't allow for competition)?

Re: New York is proposing the creation of a 'public Venmo'

#63

Post by pathartl »

Tycho wrote: post #61

What about Venmo for beggars. Cities in the UK have foreign beggars camped outside every grocery store near the city centres. Locals do not know what to make of this. Are they desperately poor, or part of a scam to exploit people’s generosity? Do they make £10 per day or £200? What can the authorities do if there’s no law against it? If there was a sort of begging venmo app where you could donate money, but it only w…

Or we could implement a basic standard of living where we don't have to have beggars.

Re: New York is proposing the creation of a 'public Venmo'

#64

Post by haltingproblem »

India UPI was proposed and implemented by the Central Bank and provides a fantastic example of a low-to-zero cost option of intra-bank money transfer which is bank and vendor neutral. Google recently recommended the model to the Fed[1].

However, what NYS is proposing is distinct from an open payment system. This is a closed parallel system of exchange which serves as both a bank account and a payment system. I don't get how this will be better than providing low-cost bank accounts to the unbanked and then providing an easy payment system on top.

Or perhaps requiring banks in NYS to provide free accounts to those whose income is below a certain threshold. Certainly another way to bell the cat rather than creating an alt-currency and a ledger.

[1] https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/can-indias-upi-becom...

(edits: grammar)

Re: New York is proposing the creation of a 'public Venmo'

#65

Post by Tycho »

pathartl wrote: post #63
Tycho wrote: post #61

What about Venmo for beggars. Cities in the UK have foreign beggars camped outside every grocery store near the city centres. Locals do not know what to make of this. Are they desperately poor, or part of a scam to exploit people’s generosity? Do they make £10 per day or £200? What can the authorities do if there’s no law against it? If there was a sort of begging venmo app where you could donate money, but it only w…

Or we could implement a basic standard of living where we don't have to have beggars.

How?

Re: New York is proposing the creation of a 'public Venmo'

#66

Post by ThePowerOfFuet »

chimeracoder wrote: post #33
supernova87a wrote: post #3

The piecemeal attempts to create a rational payments system are getting to the point where the Fed just needs to acknowledge the need for a free/secure/unified infrastructure run and regulated by the government. They are starting to do this (Fed real time payment + settlement system) but not fast enough. Other countries laugh at us when we talk about the checks we have to write, the scams we endure with mistaken paym…

> Other countries laugh at us when we talk about the checks we have to write, Checks are increasingly rare in the US as well. Ask someone under the age of 25 how often they write a physical check to someone who isn't their landlord. (And even many landlords are starting to accept other forms of payment these days). Personally, I don't think I've written a physical check in at least five years, except to my superinten…

How is SEPA vulnerable to "mistaken payments"?

Re: New York is proposing the creation of a 'public Venmo'

#67

Post by ThePowerOfFuet »

miohtama wrote: post #12
supernova87a wrote: post #3

The piecemeal attempts to create a rational payments system are getting to the point where the Fed just needs to acknowledge the need for a free/secure/unified infrastructure run and regulated by the government. They are starting to do this (Fed real time payment + settlement system) but not fast enough. Other countries laugh at us when we talk about the checks we have to write, the scams we endure with mistaken paym…

If you take away profits from banks for processing your transactions it is called socialism? Half trolling. Single Euro Payment Area wire transfers are always free, by the law. Naturally banks need to make profit, but it is prices little bit more transparently as monthly fees.

>always free, by the law

Actually, the law is that SEPA transfers cannot cost more than a national transfer.

National transfers happen to typically be free.

Re: New York is proposing the creation of a 'public Venmo'

#69

Post by tzs »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #15
codersarepeople wrote: post #9

This is aimed at solving one of several problems people without bank accounts have. So let's just figure out why people don't have bank accounts and account for that: > People who are unbanked often cite distrust of the banking system, lack of access to government-issued ID, or inability to maintain a minimum balance as reasons they don’t have bank accounts. Seems easy enough to me. Make government-issued IDs free, m…

> if you don't trust banks, you have nobody to blame but yourself Well, the banks made a pretty good case for why they can't be trusted in 2008. That doesn't mean I don't use a bank. It's just not practical to go without one, and I trust the government-backed insurance of my funds for when the bank fails, but I don't trust the banks themselves one single bit.

> I trust the government-backed insurance of my funds for when the bank fails, but I don't trust the banks themselves one single bit.

If the bank fails because they just mismanaged handling the money, that I'm sure the insurance will save the day for the customers. The Feds will come in, check the books and figure out how much each depositor should have and cover them.

But what happens if the bank fails for more malevolent reasons? Say state-sponsored hackers from somewhere that is pissed off at the US hacked in to a bank's back end systems and installed malware that corrupted the backups for a few months and then finally deleted the online records.

Does the insurance apply there? How do the Feds figure out how much everyone gets?

Re: New York is proposing the creation of a 'public Venmo'

#70

Post by captn3m0 »

haltingproblem wrote: post #64

India UPI was proposed and implemented by the Central Bank and provides a fantastic example of a low-to-zero cost option of intra-bank money transfer which is bank and vendor neutral. Google recently recommended the model to the Fed[1]. However, what NYS is proposing is distinct from an open payment system. This is a closed parallel system of exchange which serves as both a bank account and a payment system. I don't…

Correction: It is run by NPCI (National Payment Corporation of India) which is a multi-bank private non-profit body that is authorised by the central bank (RBI) to run a payments system.

Additionally, the central bank already runs a vendor neutral bank account transfer infrastructure called NEFT which recently became 24x7. UPI just happened to be mobile first and we had enough underlying infra to support such a thing.

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