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It blows our hivemind that the United States doesn’t use the ISO 216 paper size standard (A4, A5 and the gang).
Like, we consider ourselves worldly people and are aware of America’s little idiosyncrasies like mass incarceration, the widespread availability of assault weapons and not being able to transfer money via your banking app, but come on - look how absolutely great it is to be European:
The American mind cannot comprehend this diagram
[Diagram of paper sizes as listed below]
ISO 216 A series papers formats
AO
A1
A3
A5
A7
A6
Et.
A4
Instead, Americans prostrate themselves to bizarrely-named paper types of seemingly random size: Letter, Legal, Tabloid (Ledger) and all other types of sordid nonsense. We’re not even going to include a picture because this is a family-friendly finance blog.
Wait a second if the bank app can’t transfer money how do they do it? Just barter with guns? Are the bullets like coins?
We involve third parties to help spy on our transactions.
It’s OK, they charge us for the privilege.
Wtf?
Also are banks just dumb or what? Has it crossed their greedy minds that they also can charge to make transfers?
What’s pictured there is when people use Venmo to pay for something instead of just transferring money between friends. The fee is paid by the seller. Banks already do this for traditional sellers in the US which is why you’ll see signs asking for cash instead of cards.
And tax evasion. But I don’t care as long as the tamales are good.
Do Visa, Mastercard, etc, not charge transaction fees in Europe? The only place I’ve been where there’s no transaction fees paid by the vendor is China.
I owned a business in Europe. My bank charged me a pretty low monthly flat fee for card charges, so I would take cards for any amount.
I don’t know.
I’m in Australia and it’s a mix. Some places add the surcharge to the bill and can use cc for as low as$1, some don’t and don’t accept payments that’s less than 2 people’s meals ( and also don’t accept split bills).
But it’s very very hard to find a place that’s cash only. It comes to mind empanadas, so I got a laugh at the other reply about tamales.
I mean charging the vendor a processing fee, not the vendor charging the customer for the credit card fee. That’s actually illegal in the US, though businesses can offer a cash discount, they can’t charge fees for using cards if they accept them. When I ran my business our card handler charged 3. something percent on every transaction with card, higher for credit than debit.
We have a fee-free bank-to-bank transfer system that is based on pre-digital technology that takes 2-3 business days. We often call it “direct deposit” or automated clearing house (ACH). It’s often used for payroll and paying bills.
Now, we could probably make this payment system instantaneous relatively effortlessly (and thus useful for regular in-store purchases), but the banks lobby against this so they can continue to charge us fees and interest to over-use credit cards. (Interestingly enough, credit and debit cards all use direct deposit on the backend to actual transfer funds between parties).
This is all fine and dandy for most people because they simply can’t imagine doing things a more consumer-friendly way.
Your comment is all true, except - we CAN all imagine it, but as you pointed out, our unchecked hyper capitalism prevents it
Ah, right, kinda like SEPA Credit Transfer. You do need a persons IBAN which is a bit long, but their name is validated so you usually send it to the right person.
Ooh, cool, kinda like SEPA Instant Credit Transfer, which transfers money within ten seconds to bank accounts using the above mentioned number.
And that’s why, in the Netherlands, Tikkie took the country by storm. It is an app that allows you to use iDEAL (a web-based payment system, soon rolled out in Germany and Belgium as Vero) to send money to friends. Usually takes one pin and three taps to send it, and have it instantly appear on the account of the recipient.
Spain has Bizum, which I imagine is similar to Tikkie, where you go into your banking app, and instantly send money to a phone number, usually from your contact list, that is also in the bizum system, zero fees.
I imagine it has also something to do with safety? Like, if it was instantaneous, that means you can do damage instantaneously, or a hacker might have fewer hurdles to go through.
Venmo, Zelle, Cash app, etc.
My last 3 banks all had ACH transfers in-app, too, so idk what they’re smoking
And the ACH only takes three business days!
3 days? UK here, the other day I transferred money to my wife (different bank) while she was handing her card to the cashier at the supermarket. It took about 1 second.
Surely there’s some challenger bank letting you do modern stuff?
Hahaha! We don’t have fair competition in America, silly!
ACH transfer to a friend’s bank account?
I assume it’s ACH, I’m at work and my job includes doing ACH work so that just kinda typed out.
It has me put their routing and account number in, then took anywhere from 5 minutes to a day to clear, p sure that’s ACH
Wow awesome!
A day isn’t cool, but five minutes is pretty much acceptable.
I’m in Aus and our transfers are usually instant. However if you’re transferring a couple hundred bucks or more, and you haven’t made a transfer before to a person, it will hold it for a day. I think to give the customer time to call and say the transfer was fraudulent.
I pay monthly rent in Australia with that, couple thousands and no big deal
I don’t think it generally does them for person to business transfers, just person to person. But yeah it’s how most people pay their rent, whereas cheques still seem to be common in the States for rent.
I respect that!
Like most things, it depends on which state you’re in.
i just assumed people used 3rd party services for ease of use or faster transactions, seems so wild that you’d not be able to send money using your bank to me
here it takes 1-2 business day for a free wire transfer from one bank account to another, and you can do it in your banking app or on the bank’s website. you just need to authenticate with your online pin code. you can also pay 1€ to get a <24h transfer
it’s honestly much better than using a third party service, since pretty much everyone has a bank account, and pays using a card tied to that account directly
Brasil enters the chat
No fees transfer takes seconds, as long as it’s not international. People use it for buying groceries, clothes or paying for whatever they buy in the middle of the street from other people who are not businesses. Confirmation of payment from receivers end is immediate with a push on your phone.
All sellers can produce a QR code including receiver address and price to be payed. All bank apps scan and pay seamlessly.
Quite similar to India’s UPI system
Russia enters the chat.
Same. It is done with National Payment System of Cards law, which people usually call “MIR cards”. It started as replacement system for visa and mastercard, but evolved into System of Fast Payments/Transactions.
You can use it in three ways: enter recepient’s card number, enter recepient’s phone number or use qr code.
In Canada we have Interact e-Transfer. Basically all the banks colluded to make a system that allows for instant money transfer between banks using email or phone number as the recipient identifier, along with options for comments and security questions.
I felt like this was a huge step up compared to all the hoops and third party apps I had to use in Europe.
huh, yeah, i heard of similar things in the US
here it seems to be worked out through legislation though, rather than private deals, but that means it’s much slower to get set in place
Idk what all this talk is about - we have wire transfers in the US. I don’t need a third party to do it either, it’s exactly as you’ve described, I can do one through the bank’s app or on their website, and it’s free. It’s not as common though since the information required is: Name of the recipient’s account exactly as it is, account #, routing #, and exact name of the bank tied to the routing #. You can save that info though to make it easier to transfer the next time around - it’s very useful for close family and friends.
EDIT: Turns out I have two different ways of transferring money. One is just moving money between accounts, can be at the same or a different financial institution, has the same functionality as a wire transfer, is free, and doesn’t rely on third party apps. A wire transfer is apparently done via some federal system and does require paying $20 or so, but I haven’t had to do a wire transfer in forever. I’m not sure why anyone would want to do a wire transfer.
huh, here you only need the other account’s IBAN
This is very uncommon in the US. Most major banks (I’m not aware of any exceptions) charge a fee for each outgoing wire transfer, usually $25-$30. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase, and PNC for just a few examples I’m aware of, plus every credit union that has local branches in my area. Some of those banks even add a second fee at the recipient’s side for incoming wire transfer.
They often encourage customers to rely on third party services like Zelle instead for small transfers to friends and family. Many banks’ sites/apps can also handle transfers between two accounts that both belong to the same bank for free too.
Looked into it some more - I can move money to an external account via the app at no cost, but a “wire transfer” needs to be performed in person or over the phone with my bank, and there is a $20 fee. Not sure what the difference is besides the name and how the banks are handling it, but it’s the same thing. I can send money to someone at the same or a different bank/credit union for free and without relying on third party apps. Will edit my comment.
SEPA is not to take for granted.
Isn’t sepa the eu system?
Sorry but bank transfers are not 1st world exclusive, it’s common place in 3rd world as well.
I don’t doubt it. With SEPA you can transfer hassle-free to 36 countries and with low / no fees.
Actually, a lot of banking apps can be used to transfer money now, it’s just done through Zelle. We can also do a bank transfer using the routing and account number (at least with my banking app) but that I think takes longer.
They can. Idk about the availability for all banks but we have something called Zelle.