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An ACH transaction between two North American banks usually arrives on the next business day (if you place it before the cut-off time). In fact, ACH supports mu

by gst 8y ago

An ACH transaction between two North American banks usually arrives on the next business day (if you place it before the cut-off time). In fact, ACH supports multiple settlements per day now so if that feature is supported by your bank ACH transfers can even arrive on the same business day. There are a few banks that are slower, but that's not the fault of ACH - don't use slow banks and you're not running into that issue. That's very similar to SEPA transactions, with the exception that some European banks support real-time settlements for SEPA. For banks that don't support this yet funds usually arrive on the next business day. Transfers between the US banking system and the European system are usually slow and expensive as those two systems aren't directly linked to each other. So you your bank needs to send the funds to a correspondent bank which forwards the funds to the final destination. But if you use 3rd party services such as TransferWise those transfers are significantly faster and cheaper. My last transfer from my US bank account to my European account (via TransferWise) arrived on the next business day and cost something like 0.36% on top of the mid-market rate.

vsipuli 8y ago
But you cannot deposit money into any arbitrary U.S. bank account using ACH. For every account that you want to make transfers to, you first need to sign a bunch of forms. With the European IBAN system, no permissions or forms are needed to make deposits to a new arbitrary account.
- gst 8y ago
  Almost all of the US banks allow you to add other ACH accounts that you control. Just confirm the two trial deposits and you can push or pull money from that account. A few banks also allow to send ACH transfers to third-party accounts that you don't control - for example with USAA that's possible. This still doesn't 100% match how transfers work in Europe (you first need to add the account, then wait 1-2 days, then you can send funds to it), but it's definitely better than "signing a bunch of forms".
Smokinator 8y ago
A BTC transaction arrives within minutes. For merchants, that's huge. Why wait 36-72 hours for your credit card sales to hit your bank account? Why pay 2% or more for the "privilege" of that clunky old system when you can use Bitcoin for free and offload the fees (.1 percent) to the consumer? Watching you naysayers takes me back to the days when I used to try to get business colleagues to use e-mail, and they would be like, "But I have a fax machine. It works just fine." Really they were just scared of this newfangled computer stuff, but the better tech wins out eventually every time. It's funny to see so many so-called "techies" who are so incredibly ignorant of the most important technological advancement since the Internet itself. In fact, it's probably an even bigger deal than the Internet. lol
pfranz 8y ago
> An ACH transaction between two North American banks usually arrives on the next business day (if you place it before the cut-off time). I keep hearing this, but out of the many banks I've tried I've never once seen this happen. I just looked at a recent transaction; email shows I initiated it at 9:18am PST on Jan 30 (which could be past the cutoff if it was noon EST), the withdrawal account shows the money deducted on Jan 31, and the deposit account shows it landing on Jan 1--one business day, right? Nah, or at least I'm not informed of them on those days. I don't see them show up for another day or two. When the money does show up in the account, it's often "not available" for another day or two. I'm just one dude who happens to have a few different banks for savings and my wife's account and tries to pay bills on time. This was also a thing when I was pooling money for a mortgage downpayment. I can't imagine running a business. It frustrates me that for a country that deifies financial markets and capitalism will ignore liquidity like this (even between accounts owned by the same entity). 1 business day (before the cutoff!) still isn't that great. The docs I found about same-day ACH said it was approved in 2015 and only rolled out last year...and it looks like they charge a fee per transaction[1][2] [1] https://web.nacha.org/system/files/resource/2017-08/Same-Day-ACH-FAQ-2016_0.pdf https://web.nacha.org/system/files/resource/2017-08/Same-Day... [2] https://content.capitalone.com/TMgmt/images/Same_Day_ACH_%20FAQ.pdf https://content.capitalone.com/TMgmt/images/Same_Day_ACH_%20...

by gst 8y ago

vsipuli 8y ago

But you cannot deposit money into any arbitrary U.S. bank account using ACH. For every account that you want to make transfers to, you first need to sign a bunch of forms. With the European IBAN system, no permissions or forms are needed to make deposits to a new arbitrary account.

gst 8y ago
Almost all of the US banks allow you to add other ACH accounts that you control. Just confirm the two trial deposits and you can push or pull money from that account. A few banks also allow to send ACH transfers to third-party accounts that you don't control - for example with USAA that's possible. This still doesn't 100% match how transfers work in Europe (you first need to add the account, then wait 1-2 days, then you can send funds to it), but it's definitely better than "signing a bunch of forms".

Smokinator 8y ago

A BTC transaction arrives within minutes. For merchants, that's huge. Why wait 36-72 hours for your credit card sales to hit your bank account? Why pay 2% or more for the "privilege" of that clunky old system when you can use Bitcoin for free and offload the fees (.1 percent) to the consumer? Watching you naysayers takes me back to the days when I used to try to get business colleagues to use e-mail, and they would be like, "But I have a fax machine. It works just fine." Really they were just scared of this newfangled computer stuff, but the better tech wins out eventually every time. It's funny to see so many so-called "techies" who are so incredibly ignorant of the most important technological advancement since the Internet itself. In fact, it's probably an even bigger deal than the Internet. lol

pfranz 8y ago

> An ACH transaction between two North American banks usually arrives on the next business day (if you place it before the cut-off time). I keep hearing this, but out of the many banks I've tried I've never once seen this happen. I just looked at a recent transaction; email shows I initiated it at 9:18am PST on Jan 30 (which could be past the cutoff if it was noon EST), the withdrawal account shows the money deducted on Jan 31, and the deposit account shows it landing on Jan 1--one business day, right? Nah, or at least I'm not informed of them on those days. I don't see them show up for another day or two. When the money does show up in the account, it's often "not available" for another day or two. I'm just one dude who happens to have a few different banks for savings and my wife's account and tries to pay bills on time. This was also a thing when I was pooling money for a mortgage downpayment. I can't imagine running a business. It frustrates me that for a country that deifies financial markets and capitalism will ignore liquidity like this (even between accounts owned by the same entity). 1 business day (before the cutoff!) still isn't that great. The docs I found about same-day ACH said it was approved in 2015 and only rolled out last year...and it looks like they charge a fee per transaction[1][2] [1] https://web.nacha.org/system/files/resource/2017-08/Same-Day-ACH-FAQ-2016_0.pdf https://web.nacha.org/system/files/resource/2017-08/Same-Day... [2] https://content.capitalone.com/TMgmt/images/Same_Day_ACH_%20FAQ.pdf https://content.capitalone.com/TMgmt/images/Same_Day_ACH_%20...