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Meanwhile, everybody outside the US is trying to figure out how it's taken so long for easy person-to-person payments to happen there. Here in NZ, you've been

Meanwhile, everybody outside the US is trying to figure out how it's taken so long for easy person-to-person payments to happen there. Here in NZ, you've been able to pay directly to someone's bank account number for free for as long as I can remember, and my bank introduced payments to mobile numbers, facebook accounts, and email addresses 3 years ago. (Oh and it's totally safe to broadcast your account number to everyone, most companies have it listed on their website. No way to pull money from it through ACH without their permission).

softdev12 12y ago
the global issue, in theory, is easily solved with a cryptocurrency like bitcoin. if bitcoin could ever get a better user experience (don't have to go through the pain of setting up a wallet, etc.), these type of services would be much less attractive.
- barnaby 12y ago
  Agreed. Going from a NZ bank to another country's bank isn't that simple anymore. Using an international currency makes it equally simple anywhere in the world. Bitcoin already has a better user experience than banks. Just give it another year or two, to the point where bitcoin will be invisible to users the same way that Linux is invisible (yet, the world runs on it). These services will be rewritten with bitcoin under the hood and nobody will even know or care.
  - seestheday 12y ago
    I think you're radically underestimating the entrenched interests that are at play here.
Negitivefrags 12y ago
As someone else from NZ I would like to second this. We got a US bank account for our company and I was surprised how archaic the US banking industry is. Another thing very interesting in NZ/AU is EFTPOS. EFTPOS is like the credit card system only with no transaction costs. Any shop in NZ/AU will take it. The original business model for EFTPOS was that the user pays a fixed charge per transaction. I think it was something like 20c originally. However, because each bank was free to charge it's customers whatever it pleased for EFTPOS, price competition very quickly reduced that cost to zero (Which to be fair is what the actual cost of a purely electronic transaction should be). There is no reason not to pay for even the most trivial purchase with EFTPOS so I haven't carried cash around in my entire life. The only reason everyone still uses credit cards as well is for online purchases. EFTPOS is in person only. The number on the front of the card has no ability to be used for making a payment. I think the place where VISA is starting to get more inroads into the NZ market is with NFC. NFC is getting more prevalent, and we are also starting to see things like this turn up as well: https://www.asb.co.nz/paytag/ https://www.asb.co.nz/paytag/
- jpmattia 12y ago
  > EFTPOS is like the credit card system only with no transaction costs. Somebody is picking up the tab. Is it the merchants? or the banks? gov't (=taxes)?
  - hdevalence 12y ago
    Your question was answered in the parent comment: the users paid, and competition drove the fees to zero, i.e., the costs are now paid by the banks.
  - Negitivefrags 12y ago
    The merchant has to buy (or rent) an EFTPOS terminal. The bank also charges the merchant a setup fee to connect your terminal to your bank account. Once that has been done there are no more fees. You have to look at the way it evolved. Because this is a service offered to customers by each bank in competition with each other, the competition drove the price per transaction to zero.
    - jpmattia 12y ago
      > the competition drove the price per transaction to zero. So the customers are paying. The banks just build it into the banking fees. It's not like that infrastructure is free.
      - aragot 12y ago
        > so the customers are paying. Yeah. Kindof. NAB has the debit card account free of charge, unlimited ATM withdrawals, transfers across banks free and attractive savings rates. CBA's fee is $5/mo unless you get a salary per month through your account. Pretty much the same for the 4 major banks. In France you need to pay 60-120€/year for an account + CC. In Australia you don't need to pay. In US don't they beg you to open a credit card?
        jpmattia 12y ago
tmcz26 12y ago
Same here in Brazil. Bank accounts are "push-only", though utilities companies can "pull" if I allow them to. My bank even has a slick app to send money to others using their mobile number. Credit card fees still exist and are pricier than the US, though. All chip-and-pin so POS fraud is much lower than Card Not Present.
adventured 12y ago
It's primarily a regulatory problem with how the US financial system is set up and overseen by the Federal Government. It's a hyper regulated industry. Trying to do anything even slightly different in the world of moving money, banking, finance etc is simply a nightmare. Payment innovation would have been drastically faster, were it not for the obscene regulations that are in place at both the Federal and State levels. PayPal ran into this brick wall while traveling at a high rate of speed, very early into its existence.
- olefoo 12y ago
  You have a point, but you are missing a larger problem that is part of why the US financial system is regulated the way it is. Regulatory capture by the banks themselves. At this time the regulatory environment serves as much as a barrier to entry as it does protection for the consumer. All the "whips and bondage" compliance requirements are relatively easy to achieve if you're already a full-scale multi-billion dollar bank. But they are a formidable moat for any startup that needs to scale before they can afford to do all the necessary compliance auditing. This is why simple.com is a friendly front-end for an existing financial institution and not a bank in it's own right.
- kungfooguru 12y ago
  So Europeans have better credit cards than us because they have less regulations? And New Zealanders have easy peer to peer transfers because of what less regulations? And all of this could be more easily done by getting rid of banks except for a single federal bank.
  - seestheday 12y ago
    I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but there are thousands of banks in the US [1]. Getting rid of all of them except for a single federal bank is a gargantuan task. 1. http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304579404579232343313671258 http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023045794045792...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
vishnugupta 12y ago
> Oh and it's totally safe to broadcast your account number to everyone, most companies have it listed on their website. No way to pull money from it through ACH without their permission Totally second this; I'm from India. It's bit scary to know that in US "account number + routing number" is sort of secret key to the account, this is from my limited knowledge of course, but I don't think I'm far off. And yes, account to account transfer has been around here for ages; though they were bit late to get it right now we have a whole range of options; pay to debit card, IMPS and what not. Sometimes I wonder if banking in the so called third-world countries are is evolved than in the US, I could be wrong though.
JonoBB 12y ago
Even more to the point - Kenya and Tanzania have had M-Pesa (which allows payments and transfers via mobile phones) since 2007 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa). Note that this is not necessaries smart phone stuff - just a plain 'ol mobile phone with text capabilities will do. Also, I was visiting that region in 2006 and was struggling to add some phone credits to my phone that I had just purchased. Some random guy in the queue offered to send me credits from his phone, and I was pretty much blown away with how easy it was.
company 12y ago
What are you talking about? You can send payments to others from most if not all banks (other than small / local banks probably).

softdev12 12y ago

the global issue, in theory, is easily solved with a cryptocurrency like bitcoin. if bitcoin could ever get a better user experience (don't have to go through the pain of setting up a wallet, etc.), these type of services would be much less attractive.

barnaby 12y ago
Agreed. Going from a NZ bank to another country's bank isn't that simple anymore. Using an international currency makes it equally simple anywhere in the world. Bitcoin already has a better user experience than banks. Just give it another year or two, to the point where bitcoin will be invisible to users the same way that Linux is invisible (yet, the world runs on it). These services will be rewritten with bitcoin under the hood and nobody will even know or care.
- seestheday 12y ago
  I think you're radically underestimating the entrenched interests that are at play here.

Negitivefrags 12y ago

As someone else from NZ I would like to second this. We got a US bank account for our company and I was surprised how archaic the US banking industry is. Another thing very interesting in NZ/AU is EFTPOS. EFTPOS is like the credit card system only with no transaction costs. Any shop in NZ/AU will take it. The original business model for EFTPOS was that the user pays a fixed charge per transaction. I think it was something like 20c originally. However, because each bank was free to charge it's customers whatever it pleased for EFTPOS, price competition very quickly reduced that cost to zero (Which to be fair is what the actual cost of a purely electronic transaction should be). There is no reason not to pay for even the most trivial purchase with EFTPOS so I haven't carried cash around in my entire life. The only reason everyone still uses credit cards as well is for online purchases. EFTPOS is in person only. The number on the front of the card has no ability to be used for making a payment. I think the place where VISA is starting to get more inroads into the NZ market is with NFC. NFC is getting more prevalent, and we are also starting to see things like this turn up as well: https://www.asb.co.nz/paytag/ https://www.asb.co.nz/paytag/

jpmattia 12y ago
> EFTPOS is like the credit card system only with no transaction costs. Somebody is picking up the tab. Is it the merchants? or the banks? gov't (=taxes)?
- hdevalence 12y ago
  Your question was answered in the parent comment: the users paid, and competition drove the fees to zero, i.e., the costs are now paid by the banks.
- Negitivefrags 12y ago
  The merchant has to buy (or rent) an EFTPOS terminal. The bank also charges the merchant a setup fee to connect your terminal to your bank account. Once that has been done there are no more fees. You have to look at the way it evolved. Because this is a service offered to customers by each bank in competition with each other, the competition drove the price per transaction to zero.
  - jpmattia 12y ago
    > the competition drove the price per transaction to zero. So the customers are paying. The banks just build it into the banking fees. It's not like that infrastructure is free.
    - aragot 12y ago
      > so the customers are paying. Yeah. Kindof. NAB has the debit card account free of charge, unlimited ATM withdrawals, transfers across banks free and attractive savings rates. CBA's fee is $5/mo unless you get a salary per month through your account. Pretty much the same for the 4 major banks. In France you need to pay 60-120€/year for an account + CC. In Australia you don't need to pay. In US don't they beg you to open a credit card?
      - jpmattia 12y ago

tmcz26 12y ago

Same here in Brazil. Bank accounts are "push-only", though utilities companies can "pull" if I allow them to. My bank even has a slick app to send money to others using their mobile number. Credit card fees still exist and are pricier than the US, though. All chip-and-pin so POS fraud is much lower than Card Not Present.

adventured 12y ago

It's primarily a regulatory problem with how the US financial system is set up and overseen by the Federal Government. It's a hyper regulated industry. Trying to do anything even slightly different in the world of moving money, banking, finance etc is simply a nightmare. Payment innovation would have been drastically faster, were it not for the obscene regulations that are in place at both the Federal and State levels. PayPal ran into this brick wall while traveling at a high rate of speed, very early into its existence.

olefoo 12y ago
You have a point, but you are missing a larger problem that is part of why the US financial system is regulated the way it is. Regulatory capture by the banks themselves. At this time the regulatory environment serves as much as a barrier to entry as it does protection for the consumer. All the "whips and bondage" compliance requirements are relatively easy to achieve if you're already a full-scale multi-billion dollar bank. But they are a formidable moat for any startup that needs to scale before they can afford to do all the necessary compliance auditing. This is why simple.com is a friendly front-end for an existing financial institution and not a bank in it's own right.
kungfooguru 12y ago
So Europeans have better credit cards than us because they have less regulations? And New Zealanders have easy peer to peer transfers because of what less regulations? And all of this could be more easily done by getting rid of banks except for a single federal bank.
- seestheday 12y ago
  I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but there are thousands of banks in the US [1]. Getting rid of all of them except for a single federal bank is a gargantuan task. 1. http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304579404579232343313671258 http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023045794045792...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

vishnugupta 12y ago

> Oh and it's totally safe to broadcast your account number to everyone, most companies have it listed on their website. No way to pull money from it through ACH without their permission Totally second this; I'm from India. It's bit scary to know that in US "account number + routing number" is sort of secret key to the account, this is from my limited knowledge of course, but I don't think I'm far off. And yes, account to account transfer has been around here for ages; though they were bit late to get it right now we have a whole range of options; pay to debit card, IMPS and what not. Sometimes I wonder if banking in the so called third-world countries are is evolved than in the US, I could be wrong though.

JonoBB 12y ago

Even more to the point - Kenya and Tanzania have had M-Pesa (which allows payments and transfers via mobile phones) since 2007 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa). Note that this is not necessaries smart phone stuff - just a plain 'ol mobile phone with text capabilities will do. Also, I was visiting that region in 2006 and was struggling to add some phone credits to my phone that I had just purchased. Some random guy in the queue offered to send me credits from his phone, and I was pretty much blown away with how easy it was.

company 12y ago

What are you talking about? You can send payments to others from most if not all banks (other than small / local banks probably).