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I always found it funny when dealing with the money transfer to folks in the US that they had to use terrible 3rd party apps to move money between accounts. Yo

I always found it funny when dealing with the money transfer to folks in the US that they had to use terrible 3rd party apps to move money between accounts. You end up in situations where moving money can almost be impossible when the banks don't support the same apps. Here in the UK immediate transfers between accounts has been a thing for a very long time. Glad to see the US catching up, because sometimes the pace of technology is amazing and other times with much simpler things it's positively archaic.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
All the major banks in the US have supported online ACH or Zelle money transfers for over a decade now. ACH takes a few days, Zelle is instant, but there has not been a need to use 3rd party apps for many years.
- radlad 3y ago
  IMO, Zelle qualifies as a terrible 3rd party app... My landlord takes payment via Zelle, and I tried to setup a payment from Discover but it told me that my limit was something ridiculously low like $500. I called to ask them to increase it and they said they were unable to. Meanwhile, I can send huge amounts from my Ally bank account with Zelle...
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Sounds like your bank (Discover) is restricting you from transferring a certain amount of money. Why would you hold that against Zelle?
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      Zelle's job is arguably to abstract over banks; the fact that they pretend to do instant settlement by using debit transactions (which are then subject to all kinds of weird per-bank and per-network limitations) means that they fail at this basic task.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        Isn't Zelle one network already, that the big banks got together and made to provide a better experience than ACH? Presumably, the limits are set by each bank (for their own customers). For example, BoA has these: https://www.bankofamerica.com/online-banking/zelle-transfer-limits/ https://www.bankofamerica.com/online-banking/zelle-transfer-... There is no limit to receive, but if you want different limits for sending, then perhaps you should change banks? Although, the above limits seem pretty generous for an instant, non reversible transfer of money. If you want to instantly transfer more than, say, $15k, then presumably you would want more reversibility.
        woodruffw 3y ago
        > Isn't Zelle one network already, that the big banks got together and made to provide a better experience than ACH? Zelle is lying when it says that it's a "network." All it does is shoot debit payments between supported banks; it's not doing any settlement on its own. The fact that it can be pushed around/constrained by each bank shows this. > There is no limit to receive, but if you want different limits for sending, then perhaps you should change banks? Although, the above limits seem pretty generous for an instant, non reversible transfer of money. I bank with a large investment bank that otherwise has excellent service (as in, "a human picks up the phone anytime of day" levels of service). I'm not going to drop them because Zelle fails to abstract over them correctly; every other third party payment app does this correctly. > If you want to instantly transfer more than, say, $15k, then presumably you would want more reversibility. My bank's Zelle limit is well below $15k per month, not even day. And to be clear: I don't personally care about instant settlement; I'm forced to use Zelle.
      - adrr 3y ago
        Zelle doesn't control what limits your bank puts around electronic transfers. My bank let's me do $5k a day on zelle.
    - happymellon 3y ago
      Because Zelle chose to use Visa and MasterCard. Why would you hold it against Discover to prefer to not use Visa and MasterCard networks?
  - dboreham 3y ago
    This is all a scam to force low-volume customers to use costly wire transfers.
    - orangepurple 3y ago
      Even those wire transfers are not instantaneous. They often don't get sent on weekends and you have to wait hours. Sometimes days like in the case of Synchrony bank. You have to call customer service to initiate a wire from them too. What a shit show. Meanwhile, iDEAL exists for so long and its effortless. Just not for Americans. https://dutchreview.com/expat/financial/what-is-ideal/ https://dutchreview.com/expat/financial/what-is-ideal/
  - gs17 3y ago
    My landlord also wants Zelle. My bank limits it to $1000 per day, but even if I was willing to pay over multiple days, Zelle will not deliver to their account. They also said they can't increase the limit, and can't tell me what the other issue is. My girlfriend is at a different bank, with both no limit and the payments actually go through. I Zelle her my half of the rent and it "works". I really need to switch banks.
- happymellon 3y ago
  Literally my point. Not all banks support Zelle. It's a 3rd party app.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Zelle is owned and operated by the biggest banks in the US, it's basically like using your own bank. You do not even have to use the Zelle app, you can just log into your bank's app and transfer money from there. And sure, there would have been no need for it to exist had the US government done its job 20+ years ago as opposed to waiting until the 2020s, but the reality is that most Americans have been able to instantly transfer money online using their bank for quite a few years now.
    - orangepurple 3y ago
      Please explain to me how the government prevented instantaneous ACH transfers. Zelle is a shitty middleman with ridiculously low transfer limits.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        Zelle does not set transfer limits, the banks do. For example: https://www.bankofamerica.com/online-banking/zelle-transfer-limits/ https://www.bankofamerica.com/online-banking/zelle-transfer-... Zelle is just a payments network. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelle_(payment_service) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelle_(payment_service) Also, as far as I understand, the mechanism of ACH prevents it from being instantaneous, requiring old school processes every night to reconcile and finalize transactions. ACH does not check if accounts have money in real time, it assumes it, and then deals with problems later, which is why transactions take days to finalize.
    - cvalka 3y ago
      LOL. The Zelle limits are ridiculously low. Most Americans don't have online access to transferring money. Wire and ACH online transfers are usually not available to the average b2c consumer.
- raverbashing 3y ago
  If the situation was so fine and dandy you wouldn't still have $30tri of cheque transactions "ACH takes a few days" Americans in denial about this and their "open market for tax filing solutions" is interesting
  - cuuupid 3y ago
    I don’t know how this devolved into an America bashing thread but it’s worth noting that cheque transactions have other causes. You could make the same argument about the popularity of cash as a payment method abroad. ACH sucks but Zelle is at least second party; every major bank supports it and I don’t need any details to transfer money beyond their phone number.
    - raverbashing 3y ago
      Well, cash is cash, I don't think its use is mainly due to lack of technology access (for the most part) Apart from cashier's cheques (which also are pretty rare in places with functioning quick payment systems) what do you think are the other uses of cheques?
    - happymellon 3y ago
      I didn't mean for this to be an American bashing thread I'm just surprised that it's taken this long. Zelle is not universal, I think it's around 20% of banks/credit unions don't support it, and has high fees associated with it. It's good to see the Fed doing something about it.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        I have never seen an fee associated with transferring money with Zelle.
        happymellon 3y ago
        That has to be the worst take in this entire thread. Zelle does a debit charge over the Visa and MasterCard networks. Larger institutions get discounts on these networks through volume agreements, while smaller ones have to eat the larger charges per transaction because larger banks don't pass their smaller costs on.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

lotsofpulp 3y ago

All the major banks in the US have supported online ACH or Zelle money transfers for over a decade now. ACH takes a few days, Zelle is instant, but there has not been a need to use 3rd party apps for many years.

radlad 3y ago
IMO, Zelle qualifies as a terrible 3rd party app... My landlord takes payment via Zelle, and I tried to setup a payment from Discover but it told me that my limit was something ridiculously low like $500. I called to ask them to increase it and they said they were unable to. Meanwhile, I can send huge amounts from my Ally bank account with Zelle...
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Sounds like your bank (Discover) is restricting you from transferring a certain amount of money. Why would you hold that against Zelle?
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    Zelle's job is arguably to abstract over banks; the fact that they pretend to do instant settlement by using debit transactions (which are then subject to all kinds of weird per-bank and per-network limitations) means that they fail at this basic task.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Isn't Zelle one network already, that the big banks got together and made to provide a better experience than ACH? Presumably, the limits are set by each bank (for their own customers). For example, BoA has these: https://www.bankofamerica.com/online-banking/zelle-transfer-limits/ https://www.bankofamerica.com/online-banking/zelle-transfer-... There is no limit to receive, but if you want different limits for sending, then perhaps you should change banks? Although, the above limits seem pretty generous for an instant, non reversible transfer of money. If you want to instantly transfer more than, say, $15k, then presumably you would want more reversibility.
      - woodruffw 3y ago
        > Isn't Zelle one network already, that the big banks got together and made to provide a better experience than ACH? Zelle is lying when it says that it's a "network." All it does is shoot debit payments between supported banks; it's not doing any settlement on its own. The fact that it can be pushed around/constrained by each bank shows this. > There is no limit to receive, but if you want different limits for sending, then perhaps you should change banks? Although, the above limits seem pretty generous for an instant, non reversible transfer of money. I bank with a large investment bank that otherwise has excellent service (as in, "a human picks up the phone anytime of day" levels of service). I'm not going to drop them because Zelle fails to abstract over them correctly; every other third party payment app does this correctly. > If you want to instantly transfer more than, say, $15k, then presumably you would want more reversibility. My bank's Zelle limit is well below $15k per month, not even day. And to be clear: I don't personally care about instant settlement; I'm forced to use Zelle.
    - adrr 3y ago
      Zelle doesn't control what limits your bank puts around electronic transfers. My bank let's me do $5k a day on zelle.
  - happymellon 3y ago
    Because Zelle chose to use Visa and MasterCard. Why would you hold it against Discover to prefer to not use Visa and MasterCard networks?
- dboreham 3y ago
  This is all a scam to force low-volume customers to use costly wire transfers.
  - orangepurple 3y ago
    Even those wire transfers are not instantaneous. They often don't get sent on weekends and you have to wait hours. Sometimes days like in the case of Synchrony bank. You have to call customer service to initiate a wire from them too. What a shit show. Meanwhile, iDEAL exists for so long and its effortless. Just not for Americans. https://dutchreview.com/expat/financial/what-is-ideal/ https://dutchreview.com/expat/financial/what-is-ideal/
- gs17 3y ago
  My landlord also wants Zelle. My bank limits it to $1000 per day, but even if I was willing to pay over multiple days, Zelle will not deliver to their account. They also said they can't increase the limit, and can't tell me what the other issue is. My girlfriend is at a different bank, with both no limit and the payments actually go through. I Zelle her my half of the rent and it "works". I really need to switch banks.
happymellon 3y ago
Literally my point. Not all banks support Zelle. It's a 3rd party app.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Zelle is owned and operated by the biggest banks in the US, it's basically like using your own bank. You do not even have to use the Zelle app, you can just log into your bank's app and transfer money from there. And sure, there would have been no need for it to exist had the US government done its job 20+ years ago as opposed to waiting until the 2020s, but the reality is that most Americans have been able to instantly transfer money online using their bank for quite a few years now.
  - orangepurple 3y ago
    Please explain to me how the government prevented instantaneous ACH transfers. Zelle is a shitty middleman with ridiculously low transfer limits.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Zelle does not set transfer limits, the banks do. For example: https://www.bankofamerica.com/online-banking/zelle-transfer-limits/ https://www.bankofamerica.com/online-banking/zelle-transfer-... Zelle is just a payments network. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelle_(payment_service) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelle_(payment_service) Also, as far as I understand, the mechanism of ACH prevents it from being instantaneous, requiring old school processes every night to reconcile and finalize transactions. ACH does not check if accounts have money in real time, it assumes it, and then deals with problems later, which is why transactions take days to finalize.
  - cvalka 3y ago
    LOL. The Zelle limits are ridiculously low. Most Americans don't have online access to transferring money. Wire and ACH online transfers are usually not available to the average b2c consumer.
raverbashing 3y ago
If the situation was so fine and dandy you wouldn't still have $30tri of cheque transactions "ACH takes a few days" Americans in denial about this and their "open market for tax filing solutions" is interesting
- cuuupid 3y ago
  I don’t know how this devolved into an America bashing thread but it’s worth noting that cheque transactions have other causes. You could make the same argument about the popularity of cash as a payment method abroad. ACH sucks but Zelle is at least second party; every major bank supports it and I don’t need any details to transfer money beyond their phone number.
  - raverbashing 3y ago
    Well, cash is cash, I don't think its use is mainly due to lack of technology access (for the most part) Apart from cashier's cheques (which also are pretty rare in places with functioning quick payment systems) what do you think are the other uses of cheques?
  - happymellon 3y ago
    I didn't mean for this to be an American bashing thread I'm just surprised that it's taken this long. Zelle is not universal, I think it's around 20% of banks/credit unions don't support it, and has high fees associated with it. It's good to see the Fed doing something about it.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      I have never seen an fee associated with transferring money with Zelle.
      - happymellon 3y ago
        That has to be the worst take in this entire thread. Zelle does a debit charge over the Visa and MasterCard networks. Larger institutions get discounts on these networks through volume agreements, while smaller ones have to eat the larger charges per transaction because larger banks don't pass their smaller costs on.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]