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Moving from Australia to Canada/US felt like going back in time 20 years when it came to banking. Even ten years ago in Australia I could do more with my onlin
by grecy 7y ago
Moving from Australia to Canada/US felt like going back in time 20 years when it came to banking.
Even ten years ago in Australia I could do more with my online banking than I can today in North America.
Checks are for what now?
- lettergram 7y agoI use checks all the time actually. Every other form of payment online is “pull”, I only want to “push” my funds to external people.
- fernandotakai 7y agoi've never used a check in my entire life. when i need to pay someone i just do an online transfer.
- loeber 7y agoThat's not actually correct. By giving an external person a check, you give them the ABILITY to PULL funds from you. It looks like a push, but it's actually not. https://www.bankrate.com/financing/banking/writing-checks-increasingly-risky/ https://www.bankrate.com/financing/banking/writing-checks-in...
- mindslight 7y agoMore importantly you're giving them the authorization. Everyone already has the basic ability to pull funds from arbitrary checking accounts. heh.
- bsder 7y agoKnuth had to quit giving out real checks (which nobody actually ever cashed, anyway) for exactly this reason.
- emiliobumachar 7y agoThey probably meant a fire-and-forget method to pay untrusted parties without giving them the ability to charge more than agreed. Chargebacks are a thing, but they require constant vigilance and the occasional bureaucratic task.
- TylerE 7y agoChecks have substantially less security there. Not more - and even if/when it gets fixed the money comes out immediately.
- kolinko 7y agoThat’s what wire transfers are for in EU. Same day/instant, either free or with a flat fee of $0.25-0.5. In Poland if you’re going out with friends and someone paid for you bc you forgot a card, you just wire them money from your phone. For my whole adult life (36 yo) I only used and saw an actual check once. Wire transfers since I can remember.
- iokanuon 7y agoSince a few years ago, you were also able to use the BLIK system to transfer money instantly for free between most banks, by only knowing the recipient's phone number. To be fair I can't imagine anything more convenient.
- eythian 7y agoIn NL we have "Tikkie", where you just have to give them a link, whether it's by whatsapp, email, IRC, whatever. Sounds slightly more convenient as it's not based around a phone number (but can be if that's what you have :)
- itcrowd 7y ago> Every other form of payment online is “pull" Sorry, but if I transfer funds to a friend from my banking app, how is that "pull"? If I send you money with PayPal, that's not "pull". If we settle our debt using e.g. TransferWise, that's not "pull"..? I don't get your point. There are plenty of "push" methods.
- layoutIfNeeded 7y agoIf PayPal decided to charge you a $10 per month for “maintenance costs”, how would you stop them from doing so?
- pjc50 7y agoWell, if they're not authorised, dispute it with the bank? https://www.directdebit.co.uk/DirectDebitExplained/Pages/DirectDebitGuarantee.aspx https://www.directdebit.co.uk/DirectDebitExplained/Pages/Dir...
- mattmcknight 7y agoCan you pay your electric bill with those?
- itcrowd 7y agoYes, I pay all my bills by bank transfer (house, electric, internet, settlements with friends etc). It's the most common payment method here (I'm in Europe). PayPal et al are barely used here because the bank transfer system is free and frictionless.
- Symbiote 7y agoI'm guessing, but I think most people probably give the electric company permission to pull the money from their account (direct debit) rather than reviewing the bill and "pushing" the money every time. There are very strong guarantees in the individual's favour if the company makes a mistake.
- mantasm 7y agoThe numbers at the bottom of the check are all that someone needs to initiate an ACH transfer out of your account!
- wereHamster 7y ago> Every other form of payment online is “pull”, […] Wat? When I transfer money to another account via my bank's ebanking app that is very much "push". The transfer is executed either immediately or at the end of the business day. Nobody is pulling anything.
- anonymouz 7y agoI assume you live in the EU (or somewhere else outside the US), where it is the most natural thing to just send money from your account to another one. This simply isn't a thing in the US, as I discovered when moving to there for a time. They use third-party apps, cheques, and wire transfers (which are expensive and seem to work via ACH, a pull type system). It's simply not possible to go into your ebanking app and transfer money to someone elses account. (With very restrictive exceptions, e.g. same bank, or maybe the bank has integrated a third party service...) As inconceivable as the American system is in the beginning for somebody coming from the EU, I guess for many people from the US it's similarly non-obvious that a push system can (and does) exist somewhere else.
- mixmastamyk 7y agoNope, "online push" is ubiquitous in civilized countries. Don't get me started on filing taxes!
- mattmcknight 7y agoI think the point here is that the various bills I have to pay don't give me their bank account number, but they ask for me to give them our account information so they can automatically subtract whatever amount. If they would give me their account numbers, I would gladly send them funds. Instead, I use my bank's online bill pay to generate a check for them.
- jpindar 7y ago>I use my bank's online bill pay to generate a check which has your account information on it (I do the same thing, though.)
- mattmcknight 7y agoI am not so much worried about the fraud aspect, as I am explicitly giving them permission to take amounts of their determination from my account without my explicit agreement to the amount of each transaction and on their schedule.
- emiliobumachar 7y agoSorry if I'm out-of-date, but how do checks work online?
- falsedan 7y agoLike, to pay for something remotely? I’ve emailed a picture of the check to sellers who refuse to use PayPal and then they use their bank’s online deposit system to drop it into their account (a couple of times for second-hand board games).
- emiliobumachar 7y agoThanks for the reply. But, that sounded very unsecure. What happens if a third party cashes it first, you say you didn't share the picture, the merchant says they didn't share the picture?
- falsedan 7y agoYou’re stuffed, you’re supposed to only exchange the physical instrument so you’d be liable for fraud.
- reaperducer 7y agoChecks are for what now? For me this week: Paid for a city license, paid the cat sitter, paid for a small magazine subscription, made a charitable donation, and paid the rent. The cat sitter and the charity were check only. No other option. The magazine has a PayPal option, but I don't trust PayPal. The city license could have been done with a card online, but I'm not interested in setting up yet another account with yet another third party to mishandle my information. Paying the rent by check is free, but paying with a credit card is a $74 fee. And this is with a very large company that almost everyone knows. People do abandon checks when possible. But for the most part it's the businesses that put up barriers. Or, in my case, a lack of trust, which has caused me to use checks more. I like the paper trail. I check my bank statement every month and at least once a year there is an error. I am coming around somewhat on the trust thing. If I can use a virtual credit card number, I will. But not if I have to make yet another account with yet another password and yet more gathering of information that is nobody's business. Edit: I forgot that I also had to send a check to a county recorder out if state to file some legal documents. But that was a cashier's check, not a bank draft. Still, the only form of payment accepted by that county government is cash if you live there, or a cashier's check if you're out of state. Also, my accountant only takes cash and checks. I consider it a virtue since it indicates that she watches every penny. But I didn't put that payment in the list because it was a couple of months ago. When your life is simple, banking is simple. As you get older and your life becomes more complicated, banking gets more complacated.
- scarejunba 7y agoI know. In America, it's such a bloody nightmare with the cheques everywhere. This should obviously be first-class supported by banks. If I could just set up direct debit that would be so much better. It would all show up on one screen, I could see what this months aggregate direct debits are, what they are to each account. You could even just use the 'Transfer Money' functionality to one-time things if you don't want to give repeat access. And to top it all off, the American bank cheque system is so insecure.
- thfuran 7y agoYeah, it's hard to secure a system where paying someone involves giving them your name, address, bank account and routing number, and signature.
- djmips 7y agoCanada has Interac E-transfer which is convenient and free depending on which bank you bank with. I pay my rent with it for example.
- Scoundreller 7y agoI use checks to pay vendors I don’t like, like the for-profit power utility my building forces me to use. I have stamps to use up, and it costs them probably $7-$10 to handle it.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoThere is no way depositing a check costs $7 to $10 for any decent size business as they’re already probably handling checks. If anything, a check payment is cheaper as it’s more secure for the recipient in case of a dispute.
- Scoundreller 7y agoSomeone has to open it. Someone has to key it into a billing system. Someone has to scan it. Someone has to archive it. Some process needs to occur to verify that the payment indeed went through. I doubt their remote deposit app is any less clunky than the consumer one they give me. If it’s better, they’re paying for it. Someone needs to manage those people. And they need space to do their work. I could see it taking 15 minutes in total labour costs.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lotsofpulp 7y agoThose people likely do many other tasks. Removing checks from the equation would not eliminate their jobs.
- cosmie 7y agoIt's entirely possible that all of those someones are outsourced. If they're using a lockbox service[1], the entire cost of processing your mailed check can come out to less than $1 (substantially less with sufficient volume). And at the same time, many lockbox services will expose your data to offshore contractors doing the manual components. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_box
- brongondwana 7y agoMoving from Norway back to Australia felt like going back in time 20 years when it came to banking! In Norway I'd get a new bill and enter the code into my banking and it would offer me an option to "automatically approve up to X per month for this vendor". Automatically approved bills didn't get auto paid - but they appeared in the "upcoming bills" when issued, with a pay date of the due date on the bill. I could go an hit "pause" or "stop" on any bill - and it either wouldn't pay or would be removed entirely. Anything that wasn't auto-approved would start in paused mode and I'd have to manually approve it - but that was a single click. Still, I agree that when I'm in the states it feels crazy old tech. They still require signatures on credit cards!
- girvo 7y agoBPay gets you close with that. Had that for years and years at this point. Now we have Osko and PayID which is immediate free payments without needing to remember bank account details. It’s neat!
- brongondwana 7y agoYeah, PayID is pretty cool.
- grecy 7y agoI was doing that 10 years ago in Australia with BPay...