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In Finland, and I imagine in most of Europe in general, people just make bank transfers for most of those things. Unlike in USA you cannot just pull cash from s

by buzer 1y ago

In Finland, and I imagine in most of Europe in general, people just make bank transfers for most of those things. Unlike in USA you cannot just pull cash from someone's account if you know their bank account number, you need to setup SEPA Direct Debit to do that and it requires explicit authorization from the account owner. It isn't even really used much in Finland, most companies just send electronic invoices that you can setup autopay for in your bank. They aren't free for companies but the cost is negligible (likely less than the postage stamp would cost).

reaperducer 1y ago
Unlike in USA you cannot just pull cash from someone's account if you know their bank account number People say things like this as if the money taken in a fraudulent transaction just disappears and is untraceable, and unrecoverable. That is false. It's one of those scare tactics that the middlemen use to sell a vision of financial-techno-secure-utopianism in order to collect a percentage of the money. Don't fall for the marketing. The money has to go somewhere: Into another bank account, usually, which is easily traceable since banks by law have to know who they're dealing with. Even if a check gets cashed at a check cashing store, the store requires ID, the person getting the money is on video, sometimes they have their fingerprints taken by the store, and if something still goes wrong, the store is on the hook for the money when the transaction is reported as fraudulent and reversed. These are all problems that were largely solved last century.
- buzer 1y ago
  > The money has to go somewhere: Into another bank account, usually, which is easily traceable since banks by law have to know who they're dealing with. Yes but you actually need to notice that it happened which requires them to actively monitor their transactions on all of their accounts. They then need to use their own time to report these transactions and wait for banks to resolve it. And that's just in the good case where bank doesn't dispute it. If they do, you now need to file official complaint with regulators or sue them. Former can probably be done by highly educated people by themselves (others likely need some legal help), in latter case you are going to need a lawyer. I'm not even sure if you are eligible to recover costs for those. Why is this better than just not allowing pulls without explicit authorization by the consumer (SEPA Direct Debit) or just asking consumer to actually send the funds (bank transfer)?
  - reaperducer 1y ago
    Yes but you actually need to notice that it happened which requires them to actively monitor their transactions on all of their accounts. Do they not have account alerts in your country? Any time any of my balances change, I get an immediate push notification.
    - buzer 1y ago
      > Do they not have account alerts in your country? Any time any of my balances change, I get an immediate push notification. Just to be clear, I currently live in the US. In Finland some banks offer email/SMS notifications but they often have fees associated with them. Frequent notifications can create notification fatigue and that's not really great either as I'm sure anyone who gets false positive alerts from monitoring system knows.

by buzer 1y ago

reaperducer 1y ago

Unlike in USA you cannot just pull cash from someone's account if you know their bank account number People say things like this as if the money taken in a fraudulent transaction just disappears and is untraceable, and unrecoverable. That is false. It's one of those scare tactics that the middlemen use to sell a vision of financial-techno-secure-utopianism in order to collect a percentage of the money. Don't fall for the marketing. The money has to go somewhere: Into another bank account, usually, which is easily traceable since banks by law have to know who they're dealing with. Even if a check gets cashed at a check cashing store, the store requires ID, the person getting the money is on video, sometimes they have their fingerprints taken by the store, and if something still goes wrong, the store is on the hook for the money when the transaction is reported as fraudulent and reversed. These are all problems that were largely solved last century.

buzer 1y ago
> The money has to go somewhere: Into another bank account, usually, which is easily traceable since banks by law have to know who they're dealing with. Yes but you actually need to notice that it happened which requires them to actively monitor their transactions on all of their accounts. They then need to use their own time to report these transactions and wait for banks to resolve it. And that's just in the good case where bank doesn't dispute it. If they do, you now need to file official complaint with regulators or sue them. Former can probably be done by highly educated people by themselves (others likely need some legal help), in latter case you are going to need a lawyer. I'm not even sure if you are eligible to recover costs for those. Why is this better than just not allowing pulls without explicit authorization by the consumer (SEPA Direct Debit) or just asking consumer to actually send the funds (bank transfer)?
- reaperducer 1y ago
  Yes but you actually need to notice that it happened which requires them to actively monitor their transactions on all of their accounts. Do they not have account alerts in your country? Any time any of my balances change, I get an immediate push notification.
  - buzer 1y ago
    > Do they not have account alerts in your country? Any time any of my balances change, I get an immediate push notification. Just to be clear, I currently live in the US. In Finland some banks offer email/SMS notifications but they often have fees associated with them. Frequent notifications can create notification fatigue and that's not really great either as I'm sure anyone who gets false positive alerts from monitoring system knows.