Poland has a really interesting system (Blik), based internally on fast interbank wire-transfers I believe.<p>Each banking app that supports this system can give you a six-digit code valid for two minutes. You can enter this code in a supported store or ATM, either online or in-person, you get a popup in the app with the amount to be paid, the merchant and a description of what you're paying for, you click "confirm" and the transaction goes through.<p>This system is great because it enables secure payments on devices you don't trust. Because the codes are single-use and transactions require an extra confirmation step in the app, it's perfectly fine to give a code to your child who wants to buy something online, text it to a family member who is at an ATM, or give it to a friend who has free shipping due to a loyalty program and wants to order something for you.<p>This system can also do transfers and transfer-requests to a phone number. In some banks, you can even generate "Blik checks", 9-digit codes that are valid for 24 hours, cover a pre-set amount and don't require a confirmation, which you can give out to someone. These checks have been used to efficiently send money to unbanked Ukrainian refugees when the war started, as they could simply be redeemed at any supporting ATM.
> The Single Europe Payment Area (SEPA) offers free, instant transactions between European banks. They’re pull based; a user communicates their banking information to a business, which debits the user’s account, rather than the business communicating their banking information to the user in order to send them money.<p>I think this is something of a simplification since SEPA encompasses multiple types of payment. While Direct Debits are pull based you can also make push based payments from your bank, usually for free.<p>It's completely normal and safe in Europe to share your bank account number (IBAN) with others so that they can send you money through online banking. This is how I paid my rent (you can setup a recurring payment, kinda like bill pay but instant and without the risk of a physical check potentially being delayed in the mail); settled up with friends for shared expenses; and got paid for freelance consulting (I'd put my IBAN on the invoice.)
Australian banking regulator appears to think there is a natural floor cost of interbank payment settlement, which I am going to call "rent" and basically said as long as it doesn't exceed some metric for CPI related costs, it's fine to charge it no matter what the impact on transactions.<p>This is a loaded comment, because I think it's bullshit. The cost to process any payment of any size under the $10,000 AML threshold is constant, and functionally zero. As consumers, we've become a profit centre, and there is between $600m and $1b of "cost" which is being met by a % value of transaction fee, irrespective of the real costs of operation. It's regulated theft. Tax office loves it because the black economy is shrinking, small traders are wearing processing costs, intermediaries like stripe are hoovering up data, alongside p2p and inter account direct debit and payment models. Credit unions and banks have an uneasy alliance with "key" and "associated" status to inter bank clearing data networks.<p>The direct payment scheme we have (osko/payid: typically Australia they couldn't decide a single branding) is seconds to complete <i>sometimes</i> and competes with other forms of transaction clearing for cost and time.<p>We still have chequebook process clearing times. We still have "not on weekend" and "3 business day" rules. It's totally Bizarre.<p>When they spun credit and debit card fees out from each other I asked some questions of the finance regulators and they said "works for us, cheaper overall" but I think they left this $600m+ profit component in on bogus logic:<p>Tl;Dr real costs of settlement per transaction do not relate to how costs are met. Banking is highly profitable and is a protected industry under a benign regulator.
He says that SEPA has a pull model. But when someone gives me their IBAN, and I go to my bank's website (or phone app), type in that IBAN and tell it to send X amount of money, that feels like a push model to me. (I can also include a payment reference, which will probably have to be manually checked, much as he describes for the Japanese model.)<p>I've used this method for paying back friends for minor loans, or suchlike, and also for paying my rent. And once for buying physical goods from a website: they gave me an invoice with a payment reference number and an IBAN, and I sent the amount requested to that IBAN with the reference number supplied, after which they shipped the goods.<p>Maybe SEPA has both push and pull models, and this article neglected to mention the push one? (I do have direct debits on my account, for a few charities, which are a pull transaction. And standing orders, which I <i>think</i> are also a push transaction.)
For me as a consumer in the USA, one of the biggest advantages for credit cards over bank transfers is where the money is in case of dispute.<p>With credit cards, I still have the money in my possession, the dispute process is about the credit card company trying to get paid. With a bank transfer, the money is gone from me, and the dispute process is about me trying to get my money back.<p>Even with the same policies on paper, this one fact makes me prefer to pay with credit cards wherever possible.
Notably, Canada has a system that works like UPI from India and is very widely used: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interac_e-Transfer" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interac_e-Transfer</a>
Didn't get a mention in the article but Singapore's PayNow is magical. Direct bank-to-bank transfers that operate instantly 24/7, and for free. QR code-based so it's not uncommon to pay at retail outlets with this method; some shops will <i>only</i> accept PayNow or cash, because they're free. You can also pay directly to someone's NRIC (national ID number) or mobile number so you don't have to tack in their bank details or get a QR code from them.<p>Honestly the only thing that isn't perfect about this system is that there's no hyperlink standard. If you want to pay a PayNow QR code on your phone, you have to screenshot the QR code and then share it to your banking app. Would be nice if you could just tap the QR code. Other than that it's hard for me to imagine a better payment system.
Mollie in the netherlands offers an stripe like api for SEPA bank transfers, sadly they don't offer localised accounts for every country in europe yet<p>also only 50 cents comission, no %.<p>Big for big item sales
I'm sorry SEPA is pull based? IDK in other countries but in Spain is pretty common to use it for push and pull operations. I certainly do, and everyone I know. The only nuisance is that requires an IBAN number and most Banks require a security ritual which is pretty boring.<p>I didn't know that there's high fraud in SEPA either. Whoever tries to charge me, I can block em and contact my bank to make em know I didn't allow such charge, and in my case, when that happened (only once in my life) they handled everything and I got my money back.
In Brazil we have Pix[0] that seems pretty similar to India's UPI.<p>[0] - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pix_(payment_system)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pix_(payment_system)</a>
The article is probably right about FedNow likely not drastically improving things immediately, but maybe people will build good products on top of it over the coming years.<p>The launch is for late July <a href="https://www.frbservices.org/news/press-releases/062923-organizations-certified-ready-fednow" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.frbservices.org/news/press-releases/062923-organ...</a>
Most Americans don’t realize how atrocious the US banking system is when it comes to technology and transfers. It’s embarrassingly bad. Shameful, even.
Would be interesting to know how Canada's Interac e-transfers[1] compare to the Indian or Japanese systems. Probably the biggest inconvenience of Canada's system it the need to use an email address as the destination.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interac_e-Transfer" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interac_e-Transfer</a>
I've always wondered why big banks don't implement a lot more technologies, and I guess this gets to some of it. But it does seem like banks would have the incentives to kill services like Venmo and Stripe overnight. Like why are there not clear and straightforward banking APIs that let me create virtual cards and why doesn't my app let me just transfer money directly to my friend's bank account (I get global being a bit more difficult, but country wide is similar regulations, right?). I feel like there's just so much that I don't know that I don't even have the ability to reasonably answer these questions and I'm pretty sure there's reasons the above companies exist and it isn't simply static friction of big banks.
In Turkey there is EFT, electronic funds transfer. Works with IBAN's. It's fast and mostly free on business hours (depending on originating bank). You can order EFT outside business hours next work day. This is more expensive most of the time.
Recently Turkey also built a newer and faster transfer network FAST. This one has improvements over EFT for limited amounts of transfer and it's nearly instant any time of the day. You can use your email address, mobile number, or IBAN for transfers. It defaults to EFT of you are trying to transfer over the limit.<p>Europe's SEPA or International SWIFT are archeic compared to these networks. Even using Bank-Exchange-Crypto-Exchange-Bank transfers can be considered better UX
There are lots of things that many countries do better than US in regards to banking.<p>One thing that I don't often see mentioned are invoices. In Finland you can get many of them delivered as standardized e-invoice to your bank. This then allows you to setup automatic payment for them on your side (pay on the due date, set maximum value that will be approved automatically if the amount is not static). For consumer protection if the due date falls on weekend/bank holiday, the due date in reality is the first normal day. It's also the day when you need to make the payment, it doesn't need to arrive on seller's account on that date (though these days it normally will).
One major issue nobody has mentioned: privacy.<p>Do we really want every payment we make in database where it can be passed around and used to analyze, market, and persecute us?<p>I was a big fan of MobileCoin the privacy token in Signal because as far is I can tell it’s the best solution out there. They have gotten much traction largely because the feds and banks haven’t let them, however I hope some day some how I can buy groceries without my location and purchase details being sold to every data broker in the world.
As a South African, it's weird seeing this presented as a strange/futuristic idea. I pay most of my bills through bank transfers and it's the standard way for two people with bank accounts to send money to each other. As long as you know someone's bank and account number, you can send them money.<p>All local online retailers, investment brokers, etc, support bank transfers, with some[1] even providing discounts for paying via bank transfer instead of credit card. I've even paid this way at a brick and mortar place that didn't have a card machine.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.evetech.co.za/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.evetech.co.za/</a>
(2021)<p>This piece mentions FedNow, an instantaneous 24/7 bank transfer system for the US, whose launch happens to be imminent. Details:<p><a href="https://www.clevelandfed.org/collections/speeches/2023/sp-20230712-update-on-the-federal-reserves-instant-payments-service" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.clevelandfed.org/collections/speeches/2023/sp-20...</a><p>However, unlike UPI in India, neither banks nor businesses are required to support FedNow, so adoption will likely be slow, especially because the traditional (and more expensive) credit card based payment system is already firmly established.<p>There is also another upcoming system called RTP, which is very similar to FedNow, but is governed not by the Fed, but privately by the The Clearing House, an association of large US banks. The piece above mentions that both implement ISO 20022, which could allow future interoperability.
As someone who's not entirely opposed to crypto, this was an interesting read. Mostly in terms of the following: I sort of assumed that one of the factors (among many, for sure) limiting widespread adoption of crypto was that the thing we (in the US) already have was probably pretty smooth?<p>And reading this, seems like it really ain't. Interesting that crypto hasn't made inroads here. I mostly get why, incumbents don't like change, but still.
In Spain, to send money without commercial purposes, Bizum is everywhere.<p>No cost, no need of IBAN, SEPA, or any other information. Just a phone number, that might be in your contact list or not, the desired amount, and is done.<p>Some business use it too but of course, its application is very limited due to not charging a fee to end users.
"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose above the great mountainous island of Tremalking. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning."
In case you missed the other articles and discussions from this site, they are numerous and occasionally highly informative:<p><a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=bitsaboutmoney.com&sort=byPopularity&type=story" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...</a>
I still have trouble with money and finance not being on the gold standard. And the stock market just seems like gambling to me, which I don't partake in (gambling or stock market). probably why I'll always be poor.
Discussed at the time:<p><i>Bank transfers as a payment method</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29357215">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29357215</a> - Nov 2021 (323 comments)
UPI in India works, in principle, like this.<p>I use it to pay for anything from 10 cents to 1500 USD.<p>Its awesome, free and has enabled a banking revolution in India.<p>Small vendors now prefer UPI to cash, as small change is a hassle.<p>In India, even beggars are using it.
Why Americans love credit cards so much is a mystery. In Europe debit cards have been the way to go for a long time. Most countries in Europe also have direct payments through mobile apps.