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I'm intrigued by this post, because in most of the world we already have a fast, reliable and cheap system to transfer money and pay for stuff with actual money

I'm intrigued by this post, because in most of the world we already have a fast, reliable and cheap system to transfer money and pay for stuff with actual money via banks. I'm not sure if the US is unique in not having this, but asking for all this to be based in a "1st world country" when there are plenty of 3rd world countries who have vastly superior banking systems to the US is kinda weird.

bluecalm 5y ago
We don't have a system to pay for things. Bank transfers abroad are also a huge pain. You never know how much you're going to pay in fees. Every time you buy something with a credit/debit card or PayPal or any other payment provider the transaction costs are at least 3% and often much higher. Banks also exploit currency conversion at every possible step sometimes incurring ridiculous double conversion fees. Even normal conversion is often very costly. It's a big chunk of online economy existing players extract rent from. While there are alternative systems (like instant bank transfers) in many countries they don't work when you buy something from another country even if both are in EU for example.
- TacticalCoder 5y ago
  > You never know how much you're going to pay in fees. Indeed. People who say everything works fine because that one time they had zero issues have no idea what it's like to deal with EUR / JPY / USD / AED transfers on a semi-regular basis. If you do it all the time, you may have found something that works all the time. If you do it once, you may have been lucky. But if you do it two or three times a year, you're in for a world of hurt, surprise fees, delays, cancelled transfers, etc. You cannot have "not noticed this" or say "I never had any surprise". Worse: if you're working with the EUR but outside the eurozone (like Andorra and Monaco, which both use the EUR but aren't in the EU) you can have very nasty surprises. You better read and re-read any fineprints because you sign any bank account opening because you can find yourself paying 2% + fixed fees + tax on the fees on every transfer to/from the country. Very often all these are hidden from the consumers and the burden is put on the businesses. I was in Andorra, I bought a bike for my kid: seller was doing 5% discount if I was paying cash... And it's not to dodge taxes (taxes are maximum 10% there for any business): it's not to "cheat" 0.5% on the sale by not reporting it. It's because the banks/payment processors take a very heavy cut. Now there may be solutions but it's something you have to actively look into. It's not just "I open a bank account in that country, another one in that country and then everything works magically". Funnily enough: at some point using EUR->crypto then crypto->AED (just an example) may turn out to be cheaper than doing EUR->AED.
- drcongo 5y ago
  Thanks for the reply, I kinda get where you're coming from though 99% of the time, certainly here in the UK, we never see those fees - all debit card transactions and contactless payments in physical stores are close enough to free that the store pays, not the customer. Online though, yeah, totally with you. And also with you on the rather unsavoury practices of the banks.
  - bluecalm 5y ago
    You thinking that the stores pay, not the customer is part of the problem. The fees are just hidden from you. The cost of business of higher and so are the prices.

bluecalm 5y ago

We don't have a system to pay for things. Bank transfers abroad are also a huge pain. You never know how much you're going to pay in fees. Every time you buy something with a credit/debit card or PayPal or any other payment provider the transaction costs are at least 3% and often much higher. Banks also exploit currency conversion at every possible step sometimes incurring ridiculous double conversion fees. Even normal conversion is often very costly. It's a big chunk of online economy existing players extract rent from. While there are alternative systems (like instant bank transfers) in many countries they don't work when you buy something from another country even if both are in EU for example.

TacticalCoder 5y ago
> You never know how much you're going to pay in fees. Indeed. People who say everything works fine because that one time they had zero issues have no idea what it's like to deal with EUR / JPY / USD / AED transfers on a semi-regular basis. If you do it all the time, you may have found something that works all the time. If you do it once, you may have been lucky. But if you do it two or three times a year, you're in for a world of hurt, surprise fees, delays, cancelled transfers, etc. You cannot have "not noticed this" or say "I never had any surprise". Worse: if you're working with the EUR but outside the eurozone (like Andorra and Monaco, which both use the EUR but aren't in the EU) you can have very nasty surprises. You better read and re-read any fineprints because you sign any bank account opening because you can find yourself paying 2% + fixed fees + tax on the fees on every transfer to/from the country. Very often all these are hidden from the consumers and the burden is put on the businesses. I was in Andorra, I bought a bike for my kid: seller was doing 5% discount if I was paying cash... And it's not to dodge taxes (taxes are maximum 10% there for any business): it's not to "cheat" 0.5% on the sale by not reporting it. It's because the banks/payment processors take a very heavy cut. Now there may be solutions but it's something you have to actively look into. It's not just "I open a bank account in that country, another one in that country and then everything works magically". Funnily enough: at some point using EUR->crypto then crypto->AED (just an example) may turn out to be cheaper than doing EUR->AED.
drcongo 5y ago
Thanks for the reply, I kinda get where you're coming from though 99% of the time, certainly here in the UK, we never see those fees - all debit card transactions and contactless payments in physical stores are close enough to free that the store pays, not the customer. Online though, yeah, totally with you. And also with you on the rather unsavoury practices of the banks.
- bluecalm 5y ago
  You thinking that the stores pay, not the customer is part of the problem. The fees are just hidden from you. The cost of business of higher and so are the prices.