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This is one of the main headwinds with Zelle. It's digital cash. It's advertised as digital cash. But still even with a lot of consumer education, so many peopl

This is one of the main headwinds with Zelle. It's digital cash. It's advertised as digital cash. But still even with a lot of consumer education, so many people treat it as a reversible payment. Congress grilled bank executives about it last year and even most of the representatives failed to grasp that it was digital cash. If someone gets defrauded, it's just as if they handed $20 to a scammer. It's going to be hard to reverse that.

GauntletWizard 3y ago
It's not. It's just another database entry row. It's controlled by your bank and the receiving bank. It can be initiated without me being present. It can be initiated remotely. Comparing it to cash is dumb.
- tshirthoodie 3y ago
  It's a digital abstraction of cash. Are you happy now?
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  As mentioned you’re one of the folks who doesn’t understand there are at least two types of transactions in banking, reversible and non. One gives advantage to the seller and other the buyer. No one-size-fits-all and still quick type.
  - satvikpendem 3y ago
    Why can't they both be reversible?
    - mixmastamyk 3y ago
      Because the seller doesn’t want it to be and won’t proceed with the transaction if it is. Imagine you’ve sold a car, the buyer drives off and later reverses the payment. For very large transactions we have escrow—but isn’t quick by design.
      - astrange 3y ago
        There's no such thing as an unreversible transaction. There's merely transactions they don't want to reverse, which means you may have to go to court first, but you can still get the other side to send it back if you win.
        mixmastamyk 3y ago
        You could lose the case or the other party could disappear. This happens in almost every fraud case, i.e. very frequently. A new potential court-ordered opposite transaction is not what people think of when they hear reversible.
        astrange 3y ago
        It's just a credit and a debit whenever it is. A reversal before it settles isn't actually much more real.
        fragmede 3y ago
        tell that to the victims of wire fraud. they wire their savings to the scammers number, and then can't get it back, or at least, not all of it. Even after a court case.
        keep_reading 3y ago
        If the other end of the wire is a bank in the USA they certainly can get it back. It's only when the money has left the country that you're in real trouble
        mixmastamyk 3y ago
        When the money leaves the account, i.e. immediately in fraud cases.
        fragmede 3y ago
        To be clear, it's safe to assume the money's left the country in instances of wire fraud.
hakfoo 3y ago
The problem isn't a matter of messaging. You can draw as many diagrams and explain "it's digital cash" as much as you want. It's that table stakes have changed. Mainstream customers-- and the regulators who represent them-- expect reversibility as a built-in feature. The technology exists for it. Saying "we're building digital cash in 2023" is like saying "we're going to sell a 4K OLED television with seperate VHF and UHF knobs, because it was fine for Grandpa's 17" CRT." Various players may desperately want a non-reversible transaction to save a few cents per transaction, or to immunize themselves against bad-faith chargebacks, but it's pretty much ignoring everything we've learned about fraud and user experience in the last 50 years of electronic payments. At best, there might be a market for a seperate, parallel universe of nonreversible transfers, but it would likely be something tightly regulated and B2B, rather than something that you can misdirect ordinary customers into choosing (like, say, Zelle or PayPal's friends-and-family mode)

GauntletWizard 3y ago

It's not. It's just another database entry row. It's controlled by your bank and the receiving bank. It can be initiated without me being present. It can be initiated remotely. Comparing it to cash is dumb.

tshirthoodie 3y ago
It's a digital abstraction of cash. Are you happy now?
mixmastamyk 3y ago
As mentioned you’re one of the folks who doesn’t understand there are at least two types of transactions in banking, reversible and non. One gives advantage to the seller and other the buyer. No one-size-fits-all and still quick type.
- satvikpendem 3y ago
  Why can't they both be reversible?
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    Because the seller doesn’t want it to be and won’t proceed with the transaction if it is. Imagine you’ve sold a car, the buyer drives off and later reverses the payment. For very large transactions we have escrow—but isn’t quick by design.
    - astrange 3y ago
      There's no such thing as an unreversible transaction. There's merely transactions they don't want to reverse, which means you may have to go to court first, but you can still get the other side to send it back if you win.
      - mixmastamyk 3y ago
        You could lose the case or the other party could disappear. This happens in almost every fraud case, i.e. very frequently. A new potential court-ordered opposite transaction is not what people think of when they hear reversible.
        astrange 3y ago
        It's just a credit and a debit whenever it is. A reversal before it settles isn't actually much more real.
      - fragmede 3y ago
        tell that to the victims of wire fraud. they wire their savings to the scammers number, and then can't get it back, or at least, not all of it. Even after a court case.
        keep_reading 3y ago
        If the other end of the wire is a bank in the USA they certainly can get it back. It's only when the money has left the country that you're in real trouble
        mixmastamyk 3y ago
        When the money leaves the account, i.e. immediately in fraud cases.
        fragmede 3y ago
        To be clear, it's safe to assume the money's left the country in instances of wire fraud.

hakfoo 3y ago

The problem isn't a matter of messaging. You can draw as many diagrams and explain "it's digital cash" as much as you want. It's that table stakes have changed. Mainstream customers-- and the regulators who represent them-- expect reversibility as a built-in feature. The technology exists for it. Saying "we're building digital cash in 2023" is like saying "we're going to sell a 4K OLED television with seperate VHF and UHF knobs, because it was fine for Grandpa's 17" CRT." Various players may desperately want a non-reversible transaction to save a few cents per transaction, or to immunize themselves against bad-faith chargebacks, but it's pretty much ignoring everything we've learned about fraud and user experience in the last 50 years of electronic payments. At best, there might be a market for a seperate, parallel universe of nonreversible transfers, but it would likely be something tightly regulated and B2B, rather than something that you can misdirect ordinary customers into choosing (like, say, Zelle or PayPal's friends-and-family mode)