FedNow Is Live • Hacker News Board

Re: FedNow Is Live

#981

Post by spiralx » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 1:05 PM UTC

nimbleplum40 wrote: post #949

spiralx wrote: post #898

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which, as the article says, is an inaccurate model of how modern monetary economies actually work. Bank loans create new money, they don't lend out existing deposits, and repayments destroy that money. Reserve requirements - in countries that have them - don't affect whether a loan can be made or not.

> Bank loans create new money, they don't lend out existing deposits Do you mind clarifying? I agree banks create new money, but they do that by lending out existing deposits. A bank can’t lend out money that don’t have on their books…

It helps if you think about it in accounting terms where assets minus liabilities needs to add up to zero. When a bank makes a loan for $100 it adds $100 to the balance in your account - which is a $100 liability - and the $100 loan to its assets, balancing the books. Bank deposits aren't stores of physical cash, they're numbers in a ledger indicating what the bank owes you, and when you get a loan it means the bank owes you more money and not that it owes anybody else less money.

This Bank of England paper is by far the simplest and best explanation of the whole process, well worth a look even if just for the summary on the first page :)

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-...

Re: FedNow Is Live

#982

Post by Schiendelman » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 10:27 PM UTC

kaiuhl wrote: post #921

Symbiote wrote: post #904

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the rights of the T-mobile customer in the USA, if they somehow do mess up an automatic bill payment? I'm searching using the European/international term for this sort of payment ("direct debit usa") which gives me API documentation from many American payment providers, but nothing about the customer's rights. I assume it's the technical term there, and there's another term used with the public. (In Britain…

ACH has many of the same consumer protections as credit card networks. The window is 60 days instead of 90 days and the dispute outcome is always in your favor—merchants cannot respond to the dispute or win.

What do you mean by "cannot respond to the dispute or win"? Is there some documentation of the rules/laws for a layman?

Re: FedNow Is Live

#983

Post by Onewildgamer » Sun, Jul 23, 2023, 3:39 AM UTC

instagraham wrote: post #874

Onewildgamer wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UPI is not mandatory in India, don't know where and why such a message circulates. If I am benefitting with Credit Cards at petrol pumps, I deliberately use it and there's no concern from anybody. Merchants prefer UPI (for now) because money goes to their bank account without any cost. And cash still works at most places where UPI does.

Companies with large turnovers (above Rs 50 crore - 6$ million) are mandated to have a route to accept digital payments https://incometaxindia.gov.in/communications/circular/circul... Besides this, stakeholders/partners of the NPCI are mandated to offer UPI services. I'm not sure if signing up was optional, but it would honestly be suicidal for a bank not to, given that there are so many competitors offering the same…

I can see why that's the case for high turnover companies. It is to track and reduce money laundering and tax evasion. Also, it has become a no brainer for any consumer facing company to not provide UPI as an option.

I keep appreciating the regulations in India, it is overall supportive of the common man. From say SEBI regulations on derivative markets to digital payments. For eg. credit cards are becoming less frequent, people here won't take out their cards for every other expense. People have become aware of the fact that money at the end is in bank and spending from the bank account hits much more real than a 30 day stream of cash 3-4 times your salary handed to you whenever you need. And so, low income and middle income groups spend wisely and don't get caught in spend cycles above their capacity.

Such an angle goes unappreciated, but hopefully this continues and money still be real and in our pocket.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#984

Post by pas » Sun, Jul 23, 2023, 5:16 AM UTC

JakeAl wrote: post #941

pas wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

don't forget SARs to FinCEN and other AML requirements the government already knows.

It's not about KNOWING, it's about CONTROLLING. The concern is they can shut off your ability to make transactions if you don't cooperate with whatever their agenda is at any given moment, like what the truckers in Canada protesting vax mandates experienced.

in effect the requirement to file these activity reports leads to banks simply requesting a lot of data from clients (contracts, trading data, invoices), and if you can't convince them, they'll eventually close your account. so you go to a different bank. their compliance department eventually also starts asking questions, and so on.

the freezing of accounts related to the "Freedom Convoy" is quite different, as it was an exercise of emergency powers. the Trudeau admin could have ordered gas stations to not sell fuel to them, or Visa/MasterCard to not process certain cards, or anything similarly extraordinary.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#985

Post by pas » Sun, Jul 23, 2023, 5:19 AM UTC

landemva wrote: post #709

pas wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do you think it was a regulatory failure? it's not the Fed's job to make sure every bank has a sane business plan and rock solid conservative riskless strategy. its job is to make sure the entire system can take the stress of failing banks. the FDIC did its job too.

It's their job. https://www.federalreserve.gov/supervisionreg/topics/capital... The private club Federal Reserve branch in SFO was supposed to regulate SVB which had C-level executive on BoD of the regulator. The regulator failed to take prompt corrective action when SVB had capital inadequacy. SVB subsequently, months later, had inadequate capital to continue operating.

> SVB had capital inadequacy

based on which criteria?

Re: FedNow Is Live

#986

Post by pas » Sun, Jul 23, 2023, 5:26 AM UTC

sjdmdlakziggy wrote: post #622

pas wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you please compare this IBM mainframe plus MQ stack with distributed and sufficiently redundant Kafka, for example?

I can try, but the difficulty there is that Kafka is not really a traditional message queue system and the use cases are different. In short though, redundancy isn't sufficient to solve the reliability issues inherent in financial applications and transaction processing. If you want througput, Kafka is the better option. Use a message queue for transaction processing against a specific target, where it is a requireme…

thanks for the reply!

I'm aware that Kafka is low-level (and that there is kmq, which tries to implement a message queue on top of it https://github.com/softwaremill/kmq/ ), but the exactly-once semantics seems isomorphic to having the sender and the receiver doing a 2 phase commit using the log.

what are MQ's guarantees? how are they implemented?

Re: FedNow Is Live

#987

Post by simonjgreen » Sun, Jul 23, 2023, 12:01 PM UTC

snehk wrote: post #866

simonjgreen wrote: post #858

As a non-US person, just to confirm I'm understanding the implications of this, have near instant bank transactions not being a thing in the US until now?

Yes. Bank transfers aren't really a thing in the US. To send money to a friend you have to use a third party service like PayPal, Venmo or CashApp.

Mind boggling.

I wonder if the acceptance of the middle layer perpetuates the service economy?

Re: FedNow Is Live

#988

Post by jackbravo » Sun, Jul 23, 2023, 12:46 PM UTC

mattsan wrote: post #550

aidenn0 wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the eventual end-game that I can send money from my account at Bank A, to a friend's account at Bank B to split a check at dinner without using a third party like Venmo?

I had to read this twice - is it really not like in the UK? Is this the first US implementation of "Faster Payments"? Sure people in the UK sometimes use PayPal, Revolut, but most of the time its always just a friend gives (and you save on your banking app) their bank account number and sort code, and you instantly send it across. edit: with no fee

This got me surprised too. In Mexico we are also used to giving our bank account CLABE number (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLABE) that is used to transfer without fees and instantly. Even small shops use it to get paid, friends to split dinner, etc.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#989

Post by grepfru_it » Sun, Jul 23, 2023, 5:07 PM UTC

ericpauley wrote: post #686

grepfru_it wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am currently disputing an international payment and wire transfer (or walking/driving my happy ass to their office and paying cash) is the only method allowed by the lawyer representing me. That's at least one occasion you are not accounting for (a foreign entity that needs the equivalent of cash to proceed)

To clarify: they only take wire transfers and not ACH debit/credit? This seems highly unusual.

They accept ACH. Timing doesn’t allow for ACH to be useful. I could have showed up and handed them cash but would have cost 3x the wire fees!

Re: FedNow Is Live

#990

Post by vxNsr » Mon, Jul 24, 2023, 1:01 AM UTC

redditor98654 wrote: post #850

vxNsr wrote: post #840

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea BoA is not the most consumer friendly bank. I specifically have checking accounts with 4 different banks to capitalize on the various services they all offer, and to avoid being caught by a bank run type situation (or even just a bank’s services being down for a technical reason).

I am looking to move as well. What bank would you recommend for a checking account from the ones you have used?

If you’re looking for a large bank that has a large physical presence, I like chase more. They offer more services than BoA for free, though they don’t have a totally fee-free checking account (unless you have monthly direct deposits, or will maintain a minimum amount of money with them). Their website is much much better and honestly their cc offerings are better.

I was never a big fan of any of the smaller credit union websites. A lot of stuff still required either going into a branch or hanging out on the phone, though here’s the one place they’re almost all better: you’ll never talk to someone overseas with a local credit union, often tech support will be a real life unix greybeard, who you’ll appreciate talking to once you provide the right shibboleth. But everyone else will most likely be branch employees manning the phones when they’re not busy in the branch. So if you’re ok with needing to talk to people to perform a lot of stuff the bigger banks offer web services for, a CU is definitely a more personal experience.

If you’re ok with no physical presence, discover is a pretty good option, totally free checking, and last time I checked they gave checks for free. I got like 500 almost 10 years ago and haven’t used more than 50, so idk if this is still something they offer but it sure is nice not worrying about inning out of checks or needing to pay for them.