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- We don't use 2FA authentication, I guess because there are more cost effective ways of verifying our identity (probably not going to last much longer with all

- We don't use 2FA authentication, I guess because there are more cost effective ways of verifying our identity (probably not going to last much longer with all the breaches) - ACH in the USA is free and fast (one business day)... and that's the main way of receiving salary, paying bills, etc. Is Europe really any better in this regard? - No one uses paper checks here either...

delinhabit 9y ago
The piece about paper checks is not entirely true. I still use paper checks to pay for the daycare and a couple other services. I find it annoying, but a lot of businesses still rely on paper checks.
sverhagen 9y ago
Not true. If you get any kind of refund on your Wells Fargo credit card, and you want to move it to your checking account, they send you a check by snail mail, which you then deposit. If you use Bill Pay to a recipient that isn't one of the few companies they have electronic clearing with, they make you enter a physical address, for... right, mailing them the check. There is no universal system advertised by the banks I've been with to send money electronically between consumers. If I want to pay my homeowners association's dues (which, coincidentally, I am in charge of, too) I have to use a check. All the above thus includes two scenarios where I essentially end up sending a paper check to myself. I'm European import to the USA, so I may not have figured it all out, but boy, I tried. Edit: Forgot about this one: good luck being a foreigner paying the USA government for your immigration proceedings... right, all paper...
meddlepal 9y ago
People still uses paper checks all the time here in the US. Maybe not for small things but... - Rent payments to independent land lords are generally via a mailed check. - Some monthly bill payments aren't doable online. - Transferring money to people. - Large purchases.
henrikschroder 9y ago
> ACH in the USA is free and fast (one business day) One business day is slow. Not as ridiculously slow as the three business day arbitrary bullshit, but still slow. Why aren't the transfers instant? There's no reason for them not to be. > Is Europe really any better in this regard? Oh god yes. Europe has had Giro for a long time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giro Every bill comes with a receiving account number, and where I'm from all bills have been using a standardized OCR-friendly format since the 80's, which means that the payment slip of every bill is identical, which means that when we got internet banking in the mid 90's, you would just type in the numbers from the standardized fields at the bottom row of the bill to set it up. Of course, you've been able to sign up for automatic bill payment since the 90's as well, and on the off chance that you get a bill from someone you normally aren't billed by, all mobile banking apps have the option of using your phone camera to OCR the bill and pay it. Whereas in the US, sure, most large companies can do automatic ACH withdrawal, but most small companies can't. And if you get an actual bill, no two bills look the same, so you have to figure out what the amount is and where it goes, and you only get the physical address of the receiving company, so if they aren't able to receive ACH tranfers for whatever ridiculous reason, your bank has to mail them a check, which takes five days, for some other ridiculous reason, so you have to make sure the money leaves your account five business days before the due date. (Giro payments are, of course, instant) > No one uses paper checks here either... It is possible to never write a check in the US, but it's actually pretty hard. There's a ton of systems and companies and organizations that require you to use checks. I had to pay my apartment building org $50 for reserving the moving elevator for a whole day. Payment by check only. I had to pay the final amount for my moving company when they showed up with my furniture. Cashier's checks only. Oh, and cash tips for the movers. Do you know what I had to do to get a cashier's check? I went to my bank, and I had to WRITE THEM A CHECK for the amount on the cashier's check + their fee, for them to be able to take money out of my account and give me a cashier's check. It's absolutely fucking ridiculous, and noone there saw anything weird about it. When you move to the US, you cannot file your taxes electronically the first year, and you cannot pay electronically either. So you have to write a check to the IRS. I had to google that shit the first time, I had never written a check in my entire life before that. I'm renting my apartment from an individual, and she expects a check in the mail every month. Now, I've set it up to pay automatically through my bank, but my bank actually prints and mails her a check. Ridiculous. The complete and utter shittiness of banks in the US is, for most Americans, an unknown unknown. You don't know it's shit, and you don't know how shitty it is, because you've never experienced non-shitty banks. Since you have nothing good to compare them with, you don't do the comparison, and you don't expect them to not be shitty. I mean, look at you, you have complete goddamn Stockholm syndrome above where you think a one business day transfer is fast! (Sorry for the rant, I'm not angry at you, I'm just so frustrated with how shitty shit shit American banks are, and that they never seem to improve.)
BinaryIdiot 9y ago
> No one uses paper checks here either... Source on that one? I've found that people outside of the tech bubble use a paper check at the very least once a year and most likely once a month. I have seen plenty of apartments, renters, even a mortgage company just a few years ago that required payment still in paper checks in the USA. I'm going to assume your suggestion is anecdotal. It is certainly in decline but it's still widely used. Check out this article https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-26/why-can-t-americans-give-up-paper-checks https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-26/why-can-t...
- Amezarak 9y ago
  That 38-per-year number seems ludicrously high. The last time I wrote a check was five years ago, for an earnest money deposit, and I don't know anyone who writes them much more often than I do other than a few elderly people, who still use them as their primary means of payment.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

delinhabit 9y ago

The piece about paper checks is not entirely true. I still use paper checks to pay for the daycare and a couple other services. I find it annoying, but a lot of businesses still rely on paper checks.

sverhagen 9y ago

Not true. If you get any kind of refund on your Wells Fargo credit card, and you want to move it to your checking account, they send you a check by snail mail, which you then deposit. If you use Bill Pay to a recipient that isn't one of the few companies they have electronic clearing with, they make you enter a physical address, for... right, mailing them the check. There is no universal system advertised by the banks I've been with to send money electronically between consumers. If I want to pay my homeowners association's dues (which, coincidentally, I am in charge of, too) I have to use a check. All the above thus includes two scenarios where I essentially end up sending a paper check to myself. I'm European import to the USA, so I may not have figured it all out, but boy, I tried. Edit: Forgot about this one: good luck being a foreigner paying the USA government for your immigration proceedings... right, all paper...

meddlepal 9y ago

People still uses paper checks all the time here in the US. Maybe not for small things but... - Rent payments to independent land lords are generally via a mailed check. - Some monthly bill payments aren't doable online. - Transferring money to people. - Large purchases.

henrikschroder 9y ago

> ACH in the USA is free and fast (one business day) One business day is slow. Not as ridiculously slow as the three business day arbitrary bullshit, but still slow. Why aren't the transfers instant? There's no reason for them not to be. > Is Europe really any better in this regard? Oh god yes. Europe has had Giro for a long time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giro Every bill comes with a receiving account number, and where I'm from all bills have been using a standardized OCR-friendly format since the 80's, which means that the payment slip of every bill is identical, which means that when we got internet banking in the mid 90's, you would just type in the numbers from the standardized fields at the bottom row of the bill to set it up. Of course, you've been able to sign up for automatic bill payment since the 90's as well, and on the off chance that you get a bill from someone you normally aren't billed by, all mobile banking apps have the option of using your phone camera to OCR the bill and pay it. Whereas in the US, sure, most large companies can do automatic ACH withdrawal, but most small companies can't. And if you get an actual bill, no two bills look the same, so you have to figure out what the amount is and where it goes, and you only get the physical address of the receiving company, so if they aren't able to receive ACH tranfers for whatever ridiculous reason, your bank has to mail them a check, which takes five days, for some other ridiculous reason, so you have to make sure the money leaves your account five business days before the due date. (Giro payments are, of course, instant) > No one uses paper checks here either... It is possible to never write a check in the US, but it's actually pretty hard. There's a ton of systems and companies and organizations that require you to use checks. I had to pay my apartment building org $50 for reserving the moving elevator for a whole day. Payment by check only. I had to pay the final amount for my moving company when they showed up with my furniture. Cashier's checks only. Oh, and cash tips for the movers. Do you know what I had to do to get a cashier's check? I went to my bank, and I had to WRITE THEM A CHECK for the amount on the cashier's check + their fee, for them to be able to take money out of my account and give me a cashier's check. It's absolutely fucking ridiculous, and noone there saw anything weird about it. When you move to the US, you cannot file your taxes electronically the first year, and you cannot pay electronically either. So you have to write a check to the IRS. I had to google that shit the first time, I had never written a check in my entire life before that. I'm renting my apartment from an individual, and she expects a check in the mail every month. Now, I've set it up to pay automatically through my bank, but my bank actually prints and mails her a check. Ridiculous. The complete and utter shittiness of banks in the US is, for most Americans, an unknown unknown. You don't know it's shit, and you don't know how shitty it is, because you've never experienced non-shitty banks. Since you have nothing good to compare them with, you don't do the comparison, and you don't expect them to not be shitty. I mean, look at you, you have complete goddamn Stockholm syndrome above where you think a one business day transfer is fast! (Sorry for the rant, I'm not angry at you, I'm just so frustrated with how shitty shit shit American banks are, and that they never seem to improve.)

BinaryIdiot 9y ago

> No one uses paper checks here either... Source on that one? I've found that people outside of the tech bubble use a paper check at the very least once a year and most likely once a month. I have seen plenty of apartments, renters, even a mortgage company just a few years ago that required payment still in paper checks in the USA. I'm going to assume your suggestion is anecdotal. It is certainly in decline but it's still widely used. Check out this article https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-26/why-can-t-americans-give-up-paper-checks https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-26/why-can-t...

Amezarak 9y ago
That 38-per-year number seems ludicrously high. The last time I wrote a check was five years ago, for an earnest money deposit, and I don't know anyone who writes them much more often than I do other than a few elderly people, who still use them as their primary means of payment.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]