6 ms·

What's a "reference"? You can enter arbitrary info during a transaction? Genuinely curious. Is this a UK thing or available everywhere?

• detaro 7y ago
  At the very least with european SEPA transfers and their predecessors, but I would have assumed pretty much all bank transfers where you send money support some way to put a message - how else would you map incoming transactions from previously unknown senders to what they're for?
  • Spoom 7y ago
    In the US, AFAIK the only metadata you get with a direct / ACH deposit is the sender's "name", usually the company name. I assume that you can't easily change this per transaction. US banking infrastructure is decades behind the rest of the world in many areas. You can include a memo on a paper check though.
    • daveslash 7y ago
      I wonder if you could write a personal check and deposit it to the person's bank account -- write something in the "memo" line and hope that the person checks the scanned images of the cancelled checks. Of course, then that person would also have your bank account number.
    • noneeeed 7y ago
      So if you were paying an invoice, is there no way to add the invoice number/reference to the transaction? Do people pay everything with cheques?
      • Spoom 7y ago
        For regular bills, when adding a bill pay account online, the bank will ask for your account number... so there must be some way to specify that with an ACH transaction. I've noticed that the custom input memo field visible to the end user goes away on ACH transactions though, at least at my bank. Perhaps it's just used by the account number automatically? For bills that don't accept ACH bill pay (i.e. most smaller companies and utilities), banks will often print and mail payments via check for free (it just says "signature on file" on the printed check). Like I said, decades behind.
        • noneeeed 7y ago
          Wow, that is bonkers. I pay our childminder by bank transfer. Its almost instant to do from my phone, free, and I just put the invoice number in the reference field. The idea that banks would print and post cheques is like something from the era of telegrams. So weirdly anachronistic.
        • Symbiote 7y ago
          It is probably even more decades than you expect. The predecessor to this UK system was introduced in 1968. (Usage by individuals to send money didn't really happen until online banking was introduced around 2000.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BACS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BACS
          • noneeeed 7y ago
            Yep. While Faster Payments is brilliant, BACS' overnight processing and the direct debit system is total sufficient for the vast majority of cases, certainly things like bill payments.
    • tialaramex 7y ago
      It does seem crazy, take this for example: https://www.usbank.com/online-mobile-banking/transfer-money.html https://www.usbank.com/online-mobile-banking/transfer-money.... This says I have to pay a fee, and then wait 2-3 days to send somebody money. That's not caused by "infrastructure" that's caused by greed in the absence of effective government to tell them to get their shit together. Even better it tells me the size of that fee is included in a "Fee Guide" the link for which is a 404. Excellent work.
• Scarblac 7y ago
  In the Netherlands, for at least the last 35 years, transaction forms have a field "Description" where you can enter arbitrary text. Originally on paper, now electronically. Is that in any way remarkable?!
  • vincentmarle 7y ago
    In the US, you pay $16 to send a wire and $16 to receive a wire. So, wires are not as common as in Europe. On the other hand, ordering your bank to print a paper check, and send it through postal mail is free of charge.
    • gruez 7y ago
      >In the US, you pay $16 to send a wire and $16 to receive a wire. So, wires are not as common as in Europe. If we're talking about SWIFT transfers, it's probably the same in Europe. The only difference is that in Europe there's SEPA, which is readily accessible by consumers, fast and cheap.
    • Scarblac 7y ago
      In the Eurozone, banks are prohibited to ask money for Euro-denominated transactions. They're also mostly instantaneous. I don't do many though, other payment options are easier (e.g. authorize companies to just take recurring payments from my account).
      • germanier 7y ago
        They are not prohibited (I pay for them on my business account). They just need to price domestic transactions the same as EU-internal ones – which often results in free transfers.
    • Nition 7y ago
      $16 to pay someone? How do you do something like transfer your friend some money? Or pay someone who did some work for you? Here in New Zealand you'd tend to get their bank account number and send them a (free) direct deposit through your bank's Internet banking service. Until very recently that was also the main payment method for our eBay auction site equivalent TradeMe (they've now started a sort of PayPal clone called Ping so that they can skim a little extra from each auction). But I've heard people can potentially withdraw money from your account if they have your account number in the US?
• jagged-chisel 7y ago
  "Reference", "memo", "note" - some referrer or reminder about the transaction in question. Invoice number, PO number, 'movie tickets' ... it's just a free-form text field.
• hansjorg 7y ago
  If you're a European teenager transfering money to someone you know, it's customary to enter something like "Payment for the drugs and the firearms".
  • filoleg 7y ago
    Same with Venmo in the US. There is literally a whole website that polls the front-page API for Venmo, scans for some keywords that could indicate a "spicy" transaction description, and displays them.[0] P.S. I have zero affiliation with the website or the owners/developers, I just thought it was entertaining. 0. http://www.vicemo.com/ http://www.vicemo.com/
    • kraftman 7y ago
      Why are these all public?
      • detaro 7y ago
        because venmo wants to be a bit of a "social network" somehow
        • tialaramex 7y ago
          e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWFLztKBrLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWFLztKBrLY
      • herpderperator 7y ago
        You decide if you want the transaction to be public when you make the transaction.
    • Rebelgecko 7y ago
      You have to be careful with "naughty" words, like if your description includes the name of a company on the Dept of Treasury's shitlist[1] Some of them are fairly generic terms. I remember when this was posted[2] on HN (payment troubles caused by writing "Blue Sky" on the memo field in a check, because a company called "Blue Sky Industries" was caught doing business with Iran). Supposedly Venmo will also flag your payment if you put "ISIS" or something like that in the description [1]: https://www.treasury.gov/ofac/downloads/sdnlist.txt https://www.treasury.gov/ofac/downloads/sdnlist.txt [2]: http://anildash.com/2014/02/21/here_is_a_thing_that_happened/ http://anildash.com/2014/02/21/here_is_a_thing_that_happened...
• chrisseaton 7y ago
  When you pay someone, how do you let them know what it's for without adding a customer number, or a note saying 'thanks for dinner' or something? That's a reference.
• markdown 7y ago
  It's always been a thing in the countries I've banked at: Fiji, New Zealand, Australia.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• quickthrower2 7y ago
  You can in the US. Just turn the check over and write on the other side :-)