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On top of that, the BIS isnt even needed for global real time payments. A company like Wise (formerly transferwise) or any similar entity can just hold accounts

On top of that, the BIS isnt even needed for global real time payments. A company like Wise (formerly transferwise) or any similar entity can just hold accounts in each country and if the local settlement is real time they can also do real time global settlement by just updating their db and sending the money real time in the receiving location.

irjustin 2y ago
This is how they all work including western union. It's not a secret but it's not really talked about either. No one pays FX fees on each transfer. Single large rebalancing transfers allows them to actually move money at optimal times and rates with bulk discounts. Then they can currency hedge and get larger spreads on the actual fx rate.
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago
  Yup, the point was, local real time = global real time. Local real time has been the actual thing required.
- xeromal 2y ago
  Kind of a tangent but I have some friends that are kurdish and that's how they transfer money to and fro the US and skirting whatever limits/regulations exist. They just give money to a money family in kurdistan and the money family here in the US hands it to them out of a restaurant or whatever. I've been fascinated with it since I knew it existed. It's all the same stuff with various coats of lipstick.
  - fruit2020 2y ago
    Don’t they need to pay for the plane ticket?
    - ljf 2y ago
      No they mean that a family member in the US gives them some of their own money, but records it to a family ledger. At some other point funds or value will be transferred, but it isn't transferred within the family for every payment. Similar to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
      - xeromal 2y ago
        This is exactly what it is. I kind of dig it and I'm glad I know the name now
    - xeromal 2y ago
      Someone posted a link in response to you, but no money actually crosses borders. I think the best way to explain it is an example. My contact needs to get money to his family across the world. I happen to have a cousin that I love and trust who lives there and runs a gas station. My contact gives me 10k USD + a fee and then I call my cousin and tell him to give 10k to the contact's family member if they give the right password. At the end of the year, I meet up with my cousin and I bring him some gold or other goods depending on what our deficits are to each other.
- dguest 2y ago
  Maybe this is a dumb question, but how is the "single large rebalancing transfer" accomplished? I don't know of any machine where dollars go in one side, are destroyed, and euros are created on the other side. My assumption was that it usually comes down to finding someone else with money in both currencies (i.e. a large bank or government) and exchanging one for the other. Of course that's unsatisfying: it's not just turtles all the way down. Ultimately if I'm running out of, say, USD, and have a lot of CAD, I have to to buy a bunch of something for CAD and sell it in USD. If you wanted a "zero banking" currency transaction I guess the way to do it is to park on the Canadian side of the border, buy imports to the US, walk across to the US, and sell them. Or maybe there's a magic money shredding / printing machine that I didn't know about. I guess an international treaty could actually authorize such a thing.
  - irjustin 2y ago
    > it's not just turtles all the way down If you drill far enough... well anyway > I don't know of any machine where dollars go in one side, are destroyed, and euros are created on the other side. The Treasury is the machine you're looking for. And the wire transfer, SWIFT, usually, is the tool of choice. In a sense, yes dollars are "destroyed" in that they leave that monetary system. Banks like BoA hold a few kind of ledgers with the country's central bank one which gets discounted during the outflow. So euros are then credited to whatever institution you transferred it to. That country just became that much richer. This is why places like HSBC, CITI have free transfers for intra-bank but you still pay $15 for the same via wire transfer? Why would you ever want to do that? beats me, but the point is you can and it has a very real affect on the system other than some internal database going +/-. But in the end, it's the country's central bank credit/debiting any institution and then just... printing? when it wants? but other countries... m1... foreign debt. so yea, turtles.
    - dguest 2y ago
      > The Treasury is the machine you're looking for... In a sense, yes dollars are "destroyed" in that they leave that monetary system. So are you saying there's an procedure where the US treasury takes USD out of circulation, and the ECB introduces the equivalent in Euro, according to some official exchange rate? How do they set the exchange rate?
FearNotDaniel 2y ago
> Wise (formerly transferwise) Off-topic, but: this is possibly one of the world's dumbest rebranding exercises. I forget now how many years ago they made the change, but I've never heard anyone outside the company itself refer to it as just "Wise" without adding "(formerly transferwise)".
- FabHK 2y ago
  Runner up: Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy)
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago
  someone somewhere needed a promo...
- jalapenos 2y ago
  Followed by gross new brand styling Could've at least gone with calling themselves "Wise.com" or something, like "Make.com" does. Got nothing on "X" though. Have yet to hear someone in person say "on X" rather than "on Twitter".
  - riffraff 2y ago
    Really? You don't like the pea-soup on vomit color scheme? I've been a loyal user of wise for more than a decade, since I used them to pay for my cross-currency wedding, and I can accept the name change since they wanted to show they were more than just money transfer (but just make it "bankwise", ffs), but the new brand style was a disaster. Notice they dialed it down over time,it's now more neutral than at launch, so someone must have listened to the complaints.
    - tim333 2y ago
      I've been with them a while also and haven't noticed a huge change apart for switching the colour from blue to green? Site from 4 years ago "The cheap, fast way to send money abroad" https://web.archive.org/web/20210305145221/https://wise.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210305145221/https://wise.com/ vs now "Send money globally for less" wise.com
always_imposter 2y ago
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irjustin 2y ago

This is how they all work including western union. It's not a secret but it's not really talked about either. No one pays FX fees on each transfer. Single large rebalancing transfers allows them to actually move money at optimal times and rates with bulk discounts. Then they can currency hedge and get larger spreads on the actual fx rate.

danielmarkbruce 2y ago
Yup, the point was, local real time = global real time. Local real time has been the actual thing required.
xeromal 2y ago
Kind of a tangent but I have some friends that are kurdish and that's how they transfer money to and fro the US and skirting whatever limits/regulations exist. They just give money to a money family in kurdistan and the money family here in the US hands it to them out of a restaurant or whatever. I've been fascinated with it since I knew it existed. It's all the same stuff with various coats of lipstick.
- fruit2020 2y ago
  Don’t they need to pay for the plane ticket?
  - ljf 2y ago
    No they mean that a family member in the US gives them some of their own money, but records it to a family ledger. At some other point funds or value will be transferred, but it isn't transferred within the family for every payment. Similar to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
    - xeromal 2y ago
      This is exactly what it is. I kind of dig it and I'm glad I know the name now
  - xeromal 2y ago
    Someone posted a link in response to you, but no money actually crosses borders. I think the best way to explain it is an example. My contact needs to get money to his family across the world. I happen to have a cousin that I love and trust who lives there and runs a gas station. My contact gives me 10k USD + a fee and then I call my cousin and tell him to give 10k to the contact's family member if they give the right password. At the end of the year, I meet up with my cousin and I bring him some gold or other goods depending on what our deficits are to each other.
dguest 2y ago
Maybe this is a dumb question, but how is the "single large rebalancing transfer" accomplished? I don't know of any machine where dollars go in one side, are destroyed, and euros are created on the other side. My assumption was that it usually comes down to finding someone else with money in both currencies (i.e. a large bank or government) and exchanging one for the other. Of course that's unsatisfying: it's not just turtles all the way down. Ultimately if I'm running out of, say, USD, and have a lot of CAD, I have to to buy a bunch of something for CAD and sell it in USD. If you wanted a "zero banking" currency transaction I guess the way to do it is to park on the Canadian side of the border, buy imports to the US, walk across to the US, and sell them. Or maybe there's a magic money shredding / printing machine that I didn't know about. I guess an international treaty could actually authorize such a thing.
- irjustin 2y ago
  > it's not just turtles all the way down If you drill far enough... well anyway > I don't know of any machine where dollars go in one side, are destroyed, and euros are created on the other side. The Treasury is the machine you're looking for. And the wire transfer, SWIFT, usually, is the tool of choice. In a sense, yes dollars are "destroyed" in that they leave that monetary system. Banks like BoA hold a few kind of ledgers with the country's central bank one which gets discounted during the outflow. So euros are then credited to whatever institution you transferred it to. That country just became that much richer. This is why places like HSBC, CITI have free transfers for intra-bank but you still pay $15 for the same via wire transfer? Why would you ever want to do that? beats me, but the point is you can and it has a very real affect on the system other than some internal database going +/-. But in the end, it's the country's central bank credit/debiting any institution and then just... printing? when it wants? but other countries... m1... foreign debt. so yea, turtles.
  - dguest 2y ago
    > The Treasury is the machine you're looking for... In a sense, yes dollars are "destroyed" in that they leave that monetary system. So are you saying there's an procedure where the US treasury takes USD out of circulation, and the ECB introduces the equivalent in Euro, according to some official exchange rate? How do they set the exchange rate?

FearNotDaniel 2y ago

> Wise (formerly transferwise) Off-topic, but: this is possibly one of the world's dumbest rebranding exercises. I forget now how many years ago they made the change, but I've never heard anyone outside the company itself refer to it as just "Wise" without adding "(formerly transferwise)".

FabHK 2y ago
Runner up: Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy)
danielmarkbruce 2y ago
someone somewhere needed a promo...
jalapenos 2y ago
Followed by gross new brand styling Could've at least gone with calling themselves "Wise.com" or something, like "Make.com" does. Got nothing on "X" though. Have yet to hear someone in person say "on X" rather than "on Twitter".
- riffraff 2y ago
  Really? You don't like the pea-soup on vomit color scheme? I've been a loyal user of wise for more than a decade, since I used them to pay for my cross-currency wedding, and I can accept the name change since they wanted to show they were more than just money transfer (but just make it "bankwise", ffs), but the new brand style was a disaster. Notice they dialed it down over time,it's now more neutral than at launch, so someone must have listened to the complaints.
  - tim333 2y ago
    I've been with them a while also and haven't noticed a huge change apart for switching the colour from blue to green? Site from 4 years ago "The cheap, fast way to send money abroad" https://web.archive.org/web/20210305145221/https://wise.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210305145221/https://wise.com/ vs now "Send money globally for less" wise.com

always_imposter 2y ago

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