81–90 of 226 posts
This reminds me of a question I've had for the longest time (+): why is it that in the US wiring money between accounts is so expensive or difficult? Whole ecosystems of companies have sprung up (PayPal and Stripe come to mind, and apps such as TransferWise) to reduce the friction when the banks could easily set up a way cheaper system that would actually be better (privacy etc.) for the consumer. The EU seems to be…
This reminds me of a question I've had for the longest time (+): why is it that in the US wiring money between accounts is so expensive or difficult? Whole ecosystems of companies have sprung up (PayPal and Stripe come to mind, and apps such as TransferWise) to reduce the friction when the banks could easily set up a way cheaper system that would actually be better (privacy etc.) for the consumer. The EU seems to be…
Moving from Australia to Canada/US felt like going back in time 20 years when it came to banking. Even ten years ago in Australia I could do more with my online banking than I can today in North America. Checks are for what now?
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CTO of Modern Treasury here. Banks are actually starting to setup a new payment system between themselves called Real-Time Payments (RTP) which has a lot of the same benefits as wire transfers. RTP is 24/7, instant, and (from our experience) much cheaper than wire transfers. It's starting to roll-out across more banks and currently ~50% of bank accounts can receive RTP transfers [1]. I just cashed out on Venmo the ot…
If I wanted to use RTP for my business- do any third-party processors offer it already?
This reminds me of a question I've had for the longest time (+): why is it that in the US wiring money between accounts is so expensive or difficult? Whole ecosystems of companies have sprung up (PayPal and Stripe come to mind, and apps such as TransferWise) to reduce the friction when the banks could easily set up a way cheaper system that would actually be better (privacy etc.) for the consumer. The EU seems to be…
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Zelle[1] is a fairly recent solution to that problem. Free and nearly instant email address based transfers directly through your bank account without having to sign up for anything extra. I've done a bunch of transfers with it and it's been solid. It's about as easy as you can get and most US banks support it. [1]: https://www.zellepay.com/
Double edged sword IMO. If you use Zelle and off a digit in a phone number or email you are out of luck. No way to recover funds once sent.
It's been a while since I sent funds to a new address but I am pretty sure my bank's UI provided protection against that, and now when I send future funds to the same account, I just pick them from a drop down box instead of entering it manually.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
CTO of Modern Treasury here. Banks are actually starting to setup a new payment system between themselves called Real-Time Payments (RTP) which has a lot of the same benefits as wire transfers. RTP is 24/7, instant, and (from our experience) much cheaper than wire transfers. It's starting to roll-out across more banks and currently ~50% of bank accounts can receive RTP transfers [1]. I just cashed out on Venmo the ot…
Thank you for the RTP information! Had not heard of it yet. The fees look very reasonable ($0.01-$0.045 depending on type of transaction) and they provide a level playing field (flat-fee, no discounts for volume) I also heard someone say at some point that Americans are very wary of having people transfer money to their bank account. Not sure what the rationale is (maybe taxes or afraid of criminal money?) but I was…
All it takes to extract money from my bank account is the routing and account numbers. Print a fake check with that info, take a couple crappy photos with one of those mobile deposit apps, and boom my money is gone. This happened to me just a couple years ago. The signature on the check was literally "John Hancock." Perhaps things have improved in the past couple years, but I doubt it.
As for replacement programs, I trust banks no further than I can throw them. You want me to sign up for Zelle, or whatever new money transfer program is? What's the catch? No way I'm trusting any program introduced by a bank.
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You can't transfer money between banks in US Dollars within the US for free? We really are blessed with SEPA¹. Still, a few cents sounds at least reasonable. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area
I had this random thought, I wonder if it holds water: The EU states are (fairly) confident in their status as independent countries, and thus dare subject themselves to and implement such things as SEPA. While the U.S. is a single country, the states within are not independent countries and, very aware of that, try to defend their independence within the union at every turn.
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If I wanted to use RTP for my business- do any third-party processors offer it already?
Paypal (and subsequently Venmo) offers it. I've "instant transfered" money from eBay sales right to my account. They do charge a 1% fee (up to $25) versus zero fees for classic ACH transfer. If I need the money right away, I'll pay the 1% but I usually can wait the couple days.
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> Every other form of payment online is “pull" Sorry, but if I transfer funds to a friend from my banking app, how is that "pull"? If I send you money with PayPal, that's not "pull". If we settle our debt using e.g. TransferWise, that's not "pull"..? I don't get your point. There are plenty of "push" methods.
If PayPal decided to charge you a $10 per month for “maintenance costs”, how would you stop them from doing so?
https://www.directdebit.co.uk/DirectDebitExplained/Pages/Dir...
This reminds me of a question I've had for the longest time (+): why is it that in the US wiring money between accounts is so expensive or difficult? Whole ecosystems of companies have sprung up (PayPal and Stripe come to mind, and apps such as TransferWise) to reduce the friction when the banks could easily set up a way cheaper system that would actually be better (privacy etc.) for the consumer. The EU seems to be…
The short answer is "because they can". The longer answer is because banking in the US is not as sophisticated as Europe since we have many fewer banks. The few banks we have have decided it isn't worth trying to compete on convince, so they haven't bothered to update the technology to be synchronous instead of asynchronous. In Europe, there are many banks in many countries, so they had to standardize quicker. FWIW i…
The U.S. historically had many more banks than in Europe as the banking industry in Europe has historically been more centralized at the national level. Whereas in the U.S. not only did we have 50 states each regulating their own banking system (similar to Europe), but you had many more smaller banks rather than a few larger ones in each state.
It appears the U.S. now has fewer banks, but that's only because of a precipitous decline over the past few decades, and it's only been in the paste several years that the number of E.U. banks surpassed those in the U.S., long after the E.U. saw better payment systems.
So the reason the E.U. banking industry has more convenient payment systems, especially retail payment systems, is because they were historically both more centralized and less in number, which made consistent adoption of newer payment systems easier. Whereas the banking system in the U.S. was more fractured and far more diverse, and even with the dramatic drop in number and increase in centralization, we still see the repercussions.