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I don't know what banking is like in the US, but having to deal with a UAE bank was a culture shock for me. This article made me understand why it's so shitty.

I don't know what banking is like in the US, but having to deal with a UAE bank was a culture shock for me. This article made me understand why it's so shitty. No one seems to want to do their job. Everything — I mean everything — takes ages. The branch employees are utterly powerless. The only thing they can do right there and right now is cash transactions, everything else requires a form to be filled and signed and sent "to the back office" for the thing you asked for to maybe happen in "3 to 5 working days". I have only tried calling them once. They use a toll number, but then still try their hardest to "solve your issue" through an automated voice menu before you have any chance to talk to a real human. Writing to the right person directly to their work email sometimes gets your problems solved very quickly though. It was a culture shock because I'm Russian and banks don't play as important of a role in our society because of the Soviet past. Yes, most of our population has a bank account these days. Yes, most people are paid by transfers to that account. But — our entire banking system was built from scratch in the 90s. Banks had to sell the whole idea of banking to people to begin with. So if you have an issue and you go to a branch to get it sorted, you do get it sorted on the spot by a branch employee. It probably also helps that many Russians "don't trust banks" so they'd go to an ATM on their payday and withdraw their entire salary and use cash for all their transactions. We've also never had checks, we skipped that entirely. We also have this nifty СБП system that allows you to instantly make a transfer from any bank to any other bank using just the recipient's phone number. Very useful for things like splitting bills. I was shocked to find out that most other countries don't have anything like this and even sending someone money within one bank is quite a process.

ponector 3y ago
Passage about checks is simply not true. Other countries in EU have similar systems where you can use phone number instead of IBAN. It is convenient for small sums. Also you can do free SEPA wire transfer in any EU currency to any account in EU or abroad. Big difference to how expensive is to move money from pre-war Russia or USA.
- grishka 3y ago
  > Passage about checks is simply not true. The only time I've seen checks used it was for a company account. That is in contrast with some countries where checks are still in wide use by regular people for large personal expenses like rent. About EU, yes, I heard about this. Also India has a similar system.

ponector 3y ago

Passage about checks is simply not true. Other countries in EU have similar systems where you can use phone number instead of IBAN. It is convenient for small sums. Also you can do free SEPA wire transfer in any EU currency to any account in EU or abroad. Big difference to how expensive is to move money from pre-war Russia or USA.

grishka 3y ago
> Passage about checks is simply not true. The only time I've seen checks used it was for a company account. That is in contrast with some countries where checks are still in wide use by regular people for large personal expenses like rent. About EU, yes, I heard about this. Also India has a similar system.