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OMG that sounds bad. US banking industry must be a really complacent oligopoly to not care to introduce easy transfers, and thus give up billions to companies l
by badpun 8y ago
OMG that sounds bad. US banking industry must be a really complacent oligopoly to not care to introduce easy transfers, and thus give up billions to companies like PayPal (which has no reason for existence in Poland). In Poland, there’s an organization that handles all inter-bank transfers, and all banks use its API. To do a transfer as a customer, you only need to know other person’s bank account number (which is umique in the whole EU). The money is transferred within a couple of hours, or if you pay a little fee, it’s instantenous.
- ac29 8y agoThere's a reason services like Venmo are so popular in the US - they make what are effectively bank to bank transfers easy and free. The only issue is that they aren't quick (2-3 days), which isn't really an issue if you aren't living paycheck to paycheck.
- MarkSweep 8y agoIt is worse: in the US if you know someone's routing number and account number (which is written on every check), you can PULL money from their account. Practically speaking it's not completely trivial to exploit as most services that let you suck money out of account do some simple authorization first (they deposit some pennies into the account and ask you how many they deposited). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACH_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACH_Network
- pcnix 8y agoThis is actually the case in India too, currently. I'm surprised to hear that it's non trivial in the US to do the same, it's quickly becoming a large part of how people pay here.