4 ms·

I agree with your sentiment, but we don't "regularly" use paper checks in the US. Many stores simply do not accept them anymore, and I can remember just a few t

I agree with your sentiment, but we don't "regularly" use paper checks in the US. Many stores simply do not accept them anymore, and I can remember just a few times in the past few years where someone in front of me at a checkout was using a paper check --- because it happens so rarely that it is memorable. Edit: And bank transfers do exist, I don't know how you can get away with just flat out asserting they don't. That's ridiculous. Wire transfers are very old but still supported for a fee, and ACH transfers are ubiquitous. They aren't as quick and easy as in Europe, but they certainly do exist. Zelle is also a pretty recent cross-bank platform for transfers that has made things much easier.

pavlov 4y ago
How do I make an ACH transfer to a third person (i.e. not my own account in another bank)? Can I send you money using ACH with an account number you provide? If it's possible, this functionality must be extremely well hidden. Wire transfers aren't the same as European-style bank transfers because they're slow, expensive and seem to have weird manual validation steps. Zelle is a proprietary kludge that has very low transfer limits, and most people don't seem to know it exists. I certainly wasn't able to pay my Manhattan rent using Zelle, so it's not a replacement for bank transfers either.
Symbiote 4y ago
How would you pay a plumber who came at short notice to unblock a drain? Or, say, the fees paid for your child's karate class? Or a 'cash' gift for a teenage nephew? Those are/were cases where cheques were used in Britain, but the first and second are now often a portable chip debit/credit card reader, or else an electronic transfer. The third could still be a cheque, or could be an electronic bank transfer. (No-one has paid by cheque in a shop since about 2011, when the system to protect against fraud in this case was removed.)
- humanistbot 4y ago
  > How would you pay a plumber who came at short notice to unblock a drain? > Or, say, the fees paid for your child's karate class? I forgot a third development, which is thanks to Stripe and other mobile-friendly payment processors. All you need is a smartphone, and they send you a mini card reader that plugs into your phone. I see them all the time at farmers markets and even paid for a tow truck using one once. > Or a 'cash' gift for a teenage nephew? Kids these days use Venmo or rarely paypal. I don't like them and my family uses Zelle to send money to each other from our different banks. Same when we do collections at work for an employee's retirement gift, the organizer just sent their mobile and asked everyone to send money through Zelle. People even pay their landlords with Zelle now.
  - sidpatil 4y ago
    > I forgot a third development, which is thanks to Stripe and other mobile-friendly payment processors. All you need is a smartphone, and they send you a mini card reader that plugs into your phone. Did you mean Square? They were one of the first (if not the first) payment processors, iirc, to make it easy for merchants to offer card-swipe to customers, via the mobile phone attachment you mentioned.
- pacifika 4y ago
  Wait for the bill in the post
- kube-system 4y ago
  Here in the US, when you hire a plumber/electrician/etc the large polished companies will all take a card payment (or offer financing), and the small independent one-man operations will sometime take card, but often offer a discount for paying check or cash.

pavlov 4y ago

How do I make an ACH transfer to a third person (i.e. not my own account in another bank)? Can I send you money using ACH with an account number you provide? If it's possible, this functionality must be extremely well hidden. Wire transfers aren't the same as European-style bank transfers because they're slow, expensive and seem to have weird manual validation steps. Zelle is a proprietary kludge that has very low transfer limits, and most people don't seem to know it exists. I certainly wasn't able to pay my Manhattan rent using Zelle, so it's not a replacement for bank transfers either.

Symbiote 4y ago

How would you pay a plumber who came at short notice to unblock a drain? Or, say, the fees paid for your child's karate class? Or a 'cash' gift for a teenage nephew? Those are/were cases where cheques were used in Britain, but the first and second are now often a portable chip debit/credit card reader, or else an electronic transfer. The third could still be a cheque, or could be an electronic bank transfer. (No-one has paid by cheque in a shop since about 2011, when the system to protect against fraud in this case was removed.)

humanistbot 4y ago
> How would you pay a plumber who came at short notice to unblock a drain? > Or, say, the fees paid for your child's karate class? I forgot a third development, which is thanks to Stripe and other mobile-friendly payment processors. All you need is a smartphone, and they send you a mini card reader that plugs into your phone. I see them all the time at farmers markets and even paid for a tow truck using one once. > Or a 'cash' gift for a teenage nephew? Kids these days use Venmo or rarely paypal. I don't like them and my family uses Zelle to send money to each other from our different banks. Same when we do collections at work for an employee's retirement gift, the organizer just sent their mobile and asked everyone to send money through Zelle. People even pay their landlords with Zelle now.
- sidpatil 4y ago
  > I forgot a third development, which is thanks to Stripe and other mobile-friendly payment processors. All you need is a smartphone, and they send you a mini card reader that plugs into your phone. Did you mean Square? They were one of the first (if not the first) payment processors, iirc, to make it easy for merchants to offer card-swipe to customers, via the mobile phone attachment you mentioned.
pacifika 4y ago
Wait for the bill in the post
kube-system 4y ago
Here in the US, when you hire a plumber/electrician/etc the large polished companies will all take a card payment (or offer financing), and the small independent one-man operations will sometime take card, but often offer a discount for paying check or cash.