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I think you may be misinformed about "electronic money transfer" at least in the United States. As far as I know the only way to execute an immediately-settled

I think you may be misinformed about "electronic money transfer" at least in the United States. As far as I know the only way to execute an immediately-settled electronic transfer is a wire transfer, which is inaccessible to lots of people and has an associated fee for nearly everyone else.

culturestate 3y ago
I was under the impression that immediately-settled electronic transfers were Zelle’s raison d'être. I understand that it’s not universally available, but still.
- oasisbob 3y ago
  You're not using "immediately settled" in the same way as the parent. Zelle transactions are subject to reversion or cancellation ... for days? Compare to, say, settlement cycles in SWIFT: https://www.swift.com/news-events/news/preparing-t1-global-impact-north-americas-move https://www.swift.com/news-events/news/preparing-t1-global-i...
  - culturestate 3y ago
    I'm using "settled" in the colloquial "the money has been debited from the sender's account and has been credited to the receiver's account" sense, which for the purposes of this discussion is the definition that really matters. You can't just unilaterally reverse a Zelle payment any more than you can a SEPA transfer.
- stanleydrew 3y ago
  My understanding is that Zelle transfers are just settled by ACH under the hood, which is the same system that settles checks. However there is possibly some new "real-time payment" feature of the ACH network that could be equivalent to wire settlement, but I'm not sure Zelle actually uses it.
  - culturestate 3y ago
    As far as I know Zelle prefers RTP[1] for settlements and falls back to ACH only when necessary, but I'm sure there's a Zelle employee on here who can confirm one way or the other. There's also FedNow[2] but I don't know of any retail implementations yet. 1. https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp 2. https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow
lotsofpulp 3y ago
I used to pay a landlord with Zelle 10+ years ago. And Zelle obviously has a lot of limitations, such as being for smaller amounts of money so not useful for down payments or such, I was referring to checks versus electronic payments as a concept in general, not the US’s specific implementation. Which there isn’t one, but due to political failure, not technical limitations seeing as how every other country has the capabilities.

culturestate 3y ago

I was under the impression that immediately-settled electronic transfers were Zelle’s raison d'être. I understand that it’s not universally available, but still.

oasisbob 3y ago
You're not using "immediately settled" in the same way as the parent. Zelle transactions are subject to reversion or cancellation ... for days? Compare to, say, settlement cycles in SWIFT: https://www.swift.com/news-events/news/preparing-t1-global-impact-north-americas-move https://www.swift.com/news-events/news/preparing-t1-global-i...
- culturestate 3y ago
  I'm using "settled" in the colloquial "the money has been debited from the sender's account and has been credited to the receiver's account" sense, which for the purposes of this discussion is the definition that really matters. You can't just unilaterally reverse a Zelle payment any more than you can a SEPA transfer.
stanleydrew 3y ago
My understanding is that Zelle transfers are just settled by ACH under the hood, which is the same system that settles checks. However there is possibly some new "real-time payment" feature of the ACH network that could be equivalent to wire settlement, but I'm not sure Zelle actually uses it.
- culturestate 3y ago
  As far as I know Zelle prefers RTP[1] for settlements and falls back to ACH only when necessary, but I'm sure there's a Zelle employee on here who can confirm one way or the other. There's also FedNow[2] but I don't know of any retail implementations yet. 1. https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp 2. https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow

lotsofpulp 3y ago

I used to pay a landlord with Zelle 10+ years ago. And Zelle obviously has a lot of limitations, such as being for smaller amounts of money so not useful for down payments or such, I was referring to checks versus electronic payments as a concept in general, not the US’s specific implementation. Which there isn’t one, but due to political failure, not technical limitations seeing as how every other country has the capabilities.