You think Canada’s approach is better?! TELL CARNEY. The government’s push for Open Banking and increased fintechs is literally them wanting to bring in all these nonsense variant fintech apps… for reasons unknown.
I pull out a crisp $5 bill from my wallet and hand it directly to the other person.
I call it HumanPay.
Would you accept a crisp high-five?
I don’t want to touch that fake ass poop paper
I’ve heard of this. It’s sponsored by the human fund, is that the one?
Second time I’ve heard about taler in two months. A new record. I’d have to look into it again, but I can say is that if it soceeds, I hope it brings gnunet with it (except gns. It sucks and doesn’t make sense
It can be paid over Poob. Poob pays it for you.
paid over Boob
At first I misread it this way, and I was like “ah yes, the world’s oldest payment system”
I can see the memetic advertisement by now! “Tested with ur mom”, etc.
The evil trinity of American excellence:
-
Healthcare System
-
Banking System
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Temperature Units
I didn’t know just how fucked up it all was until I moved to Canada.
Also:
- Car dependency
- Tax filing companies
As an European I never understood what’s wrong with Fahrenheit besides no one else using it. Unlike feet/miles/pounds there is no need to convert them to anything else so… why?
Water freezing/boiling point being 0 and 100 is neat but nowhere near being fucked like American distance units
Check out Chicago: where you can ask for directions and ‘a couple blocks’ could mean 500 feet or 3/4s of a mile, depending on what part of town you’re in .
I’ll still take a fairly straightforward grid over the spaghetti road map that many East Coast/European cities have.
American here raised on the Fahrenheit. My rational mind knows that we should all use SI and/or metric units for everything (using Celsius over Kelvin is a pretty easy sell). And there are other units of measure like energy that depend on how big a “degree” is, so your reasoning doesn’t even apply in all situations.
However, living in a temperate northern US climate where we get a full dose of all four seasons, it IS pretty damn neat that 0-100 F is basically the scale of the outdoor temperature I can expect to see in a given year. It can get colder than 0F or about -18C, but that is an insanely cold winter day. Likewise, it can get above 100F or about 38C, but that is an insanely hot summer day.
Insanely hot or cold for this area, of course. Somebody who lives in Dubai or Greenland might not think it makes so much sense.
Actually, for hot places like Dubai, a 0-50C scale for temperature extremes probably makes more sense!
edit: used to say “but that is an insanely hot winter day” which I guess IS true…
-
Just use a bank? Why all these regulation dodging strange alternatives. Most banks even do email/mobile/tap transfers these days.
My guess is that USAian banks charge stupid fees for any sort of transfer between different banks
Bank transfer wouldn’t be instant. A lot of banks incorporate Zelle, so that’s kind of the bank’s third-party etransfer. Unless your bank is not one of the ones who has it, or you prefer to use CashApp because that’s what your friends all use, etc.
cash app is only “instant” because its an internal transfer. Internal transfers within banks are generally instant and interbank is still pretty quick these days. I think its hourly.
Serious question to Americans: why don’t you pay your friends in cash instead of dealing with this bullshit?
I do. It’s literally the only reason I carry cash around. I’m not comfortable banking on my phone.
We don’t usually work with cash. Most people I know don’t carry cash at all, and it’s a pain to get, since most paychecks are direct deposit. You’ve gotta head to an ATM or the bank, or ask for cash at checkout at the store.
It’s the same in Europe (salary being bank transfer), but ATMs are ubiquitous and if you use cash when buying e.g groceries at the local farmer’s market, the seller doesn’t have to file it (I mean legally they have to, but let people enjoy life a little). Nice thing to do with ultra small businesses where the owner is the only employee or maybe they have like 1-2 other people. Same with small garages and such, they may even give you a discount if you pay cash - and some won’t even have a card terminal. All things considered, if I’m paying 40 euros to get my tires changed and the guy pays himself a salary, about 25 euros to the tax man. If I give him 40 euros cash, he keeps all of it.
Am I advocating tax evasion? Maybe. Well, I’m advocating letting ultra small businesses decide how much income they’re gonna claim. So I like to carry a little bit of cash for that. Grocery stores and such, I just tap my phone or card.
Many ATMs here take a fee, so using em when there is a feeless way to do it requires both finding an atm and shelling out an extra $2-4. Add in that most only do $20s, and your friend may also not have cash to pay you back any difference makes electronic transfers preferable.
Ah yeah, heads would roll if they did that here. Some no longer hold 5s or 50s though so it’s mostly 10s and 20s.
Yeah there are machines that do multiple denominations here but the vast majority are just 20s.
The same thing that leads to dealing with all the other kinds of bullshit & enshittification: convenient and free! Just sign here and tell us about yourself!
Honestly though once you’re set up it seems like it’s pretty simple. I don’t actually use any of them, but my wife uses Venmo and Paypal for some stuff. There’s a small business that I order my hobby supplies from, and I just ask my wife to send whatever dollar amount to the guy who runs the place when I text him about what I need. He could just invoice me and I could pay like you would on any online store, but this is somebody I’ve worked with for years so I’m not worried about preemptively sending the money over.
Record of payment is one of the pros of electronic transfers
Can’t deny that you receive the money when the other person can pull out receipts.
Banks love it too, because then they can sell your purchase history records to the big data surveillance capitalism companies, they also have a really good idea of who your family and close circle of friends are due to repeat small payments - valuable data for the same data companies.
Sometimes it is a large amount of cash, like settling up at the end of a vacation. At that point, it is better to electronically transfer the money.
Also, I may not see those friends all the time. If they want their money immediately, they can get it electronically.
Finally, some friends don’t use cash a lot. At that point, the money is more useful if I send it electronically.
Exact payments, no making change. Jimmy paid for your lunch it was $12.35 after tip, he got back 12.35, no overpyament, no underpayment nothing owed or borrowed.
Nobody gets mugged because no one has any cash on them. ATMs have cameras, and phones are as good as dead once they’re stolen and reported.
You can collect a small amount to hold an item you’re selling online to make sure they’ll pick it up. Pay them without being there.
Not American, but cash is annoying af to deal with and I’m not gonna try and figure out how to pay a 5€ bill with a 20€ note.
You give them the 20 and they give 15 back?
I’m talking about paying a friend who might not necessarily have cash to exactly give me back.
Easier to just give your friend a BJ and call it even. Several if it’s a big bill.
I’ve gotta quit hanging out with ducks.
Mfw the rest of the world just has bank transfers
The US has bank transfers: they’re usually either slow as balls (eg, standard ACH settles during business hours in 1–3 business days for ACH credit, 3–5 business days for ACH debit) or cost a fee (eg, wire transfer). Standard real-time payment common in other countries is still uncommon in the US. 20 years ago, I also wondered “why in the electronic age of the developed world is changing some ledgers still this stupid?”.
Zelle operates over ACH. It achieves “instant transfers” through banking platform integrations.
nearly every bank in the US uses Zelle which lets you send money to another persons account with no fees, just using their phone number. for some reason people just prefer to use stupid shit like venmo.
But it’s a fucking 3rd party app that skims. Nothing in the USA is just straight forward. There’s always someone making a buck off of your service.
Saunt Neal Stephenson predicted this and so it has come to pass.
Bruh, we have a corporation in charge of verifying your identity for OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT PURPOSES such as unemployment. (ID.me)
You have to download an app on your phone, then do a face scan, ID scan (front and back), then you might have to do a video call to an employee and have to show the documents to that person again, all that just to get unemployment. (I mean, Devil’s Advocate position would be: There has been a lot of fraud regarding unemployment) But like, okay, why do just build a government-run verification system? Why are they using tax money to pay for a private corporation to di official ID verification?!?
Things are so crazy lol.
If there wasn’t some bro taking a slice that’d just be communism.
I hope you’re being facetious and not standing in solidarity with unfettered capitalism.
Let me guess: you stand firmly in the “/s” side.
most banks have zelle built into their own app. yeah zelle charges the bank a fee when you use it, but typically you aren’t paying any, unless you use a really shitty bank.
That is like the “25$ + 5$ shipping or 30$ no shipping?” meme. You are paying for it, they just don’t show it to you.
What are you talking about?
I send someone $25 on zelle, $25 is deducted from my account, and that person receives $25.
How am I paying a fee in that scenario?
Yes I know how banks work so please don’t explain how they make money using my money.
How am I paying a fee in that scenario?
The bank is “paying” the fee, but the fact that they are doing it and don’t charge it back to you proves that it is well within their margin from whatever money they get out of you (account fees etc). You are paying it.
Lmao, immediately explains how banks work. Also I pay no account fees btw.
Keep everything under your mattress eh?
Nearly…but some don’t. And that is the problem. Other countries have bank transfer figured out and not dependent on voluntary adoption from a 3rd party service. I was very surprised when I learned how behind the US is on banking, even compared with some “3rd word” countries.
American tourists still get upset when they can’t swipe and sign the receipt, and rant about how insecure chip and tap cards are.
I am so glad I don’t work retail anymore.
I get the insecure argument about tap cards (don’t agree but I get it), but how could chip cards possibly be considered more insecure than swiping? That makes no sense.
from a tech-oblivious standpoint, there is no difference between the two.
…oh wait you guys didn’t do swipe+pin did you
Sort of. We did, it was just never mandatory and could almost always be charged on just a swipe. We got chip and pin about 15 years ago now, but they again didn’t make it mandatory, so they kept the stripe. Honestly if they just got rid of the swipe we would be fine, but not every retailer has tap to pay and not every bank does chips yet.
It’s a mess. The tech is there, fucking old people and idiots keep the stripe on the cards and because of that skimmers run rampant.
I am annoyed many banks got rid of the raised numbers, at least one store I went to (less than 5 years ago) lacked internet and phone connectivity, now they have to write the numbers by hand.
Working at Walgreens the amount of fuckers with apparently tons of money needing to load their chime or cashapp is fucking insane. Like do you dumbfucks not have bank accounts.
By their appearance I am convinced its all drug addicts or drug dealers. But it is insane. I only thought cashapp was kids or I have used it for Facebook market.
It just shocks me the amount of people using these things as their main source of storing money. Like my ex who uses Paypal.
Probably not true for ALL of them but there’s plenty of people who can’t open bank accounts. People with bad credit/overdrafts, criminal history for fraud, undocumented immigrants, the homeless, etc
Wait, you can’t open a basic chequing account with bad credit? I’ve never heard of this before.
It’s not really credit score it’s a seperate system. Basically if you ever default on a bank account then you wind up in the CHEX system and you’re basically fucked for a long time when it comes to opening bank accounts. Defaulting on a bank account will put you in the CHEX system and ruin your credit score but a bad credit score alone won’t put you in the CHEX system.
My mom did it in the past where she had a bank account go severely negative due to predatory overdraft fees and she abandoned the account rather than paying it. 5 years later she still couldn’t open a regular checking account anywhere without having someone cosign on it.
Dude I default on a ton of banks and overdrafted like 1200 out of Avast. Even wrote hot checks in my youth ( but I quickly paid them off) I still have had no issues getting a checking account. I have three different accounts with 3 banks.
So I don’t know how fuck your credit needs to be but guess I haven’t hit that low yet.
Not even bad credit, some banks will debank you for a variety of arbitrary reasons. You need an address, usually have to have regular income, and have to have all of your documents at a minimum, but if you end up in CHEX for any reason (like telling a bank to fuck themselves for almost $400 in overdraft fees that were their fault in the first place) you get denied outright.
If that sounds easy and simple then congrats on your incredibly privileged and sheltered upbringing.
My father falls hard for pig butchering and romance and job scams. On top of the social engineering where he sent various people all his life savings, they also sold his account information and repeatedly drained his accounts. He noticed and reported as fraud the non-voluntary transactions (remaining impervious to all their red-flag communications on the voluntary transactions), on at least a weekly basis for like a year before the banks iced him out. I can’t really blame the banks there.
It might be more like excessive overdraft fees
Banks are for profit… how can they scam you with overdraft fees if your too poor to be scammed?
And Zelle is rife with fraud.
Is it much better elsewhere with instant payments/transfers? The EU reports similar fraud issues with their instant payments systems.
In one of its latest reports, the European Banking Authority (EBA) has highlighted a surge in impersonation fraud and sophisticated online and social scams, often leveraging new payment methods such as instant payments.
With the EU, I only see instant payment regulations for enabling the payer to verify the payee
A Verification of Payee (VoP) service informs payers of any discrepancies between the payment account identifier given and the name of the intended payee. Payers will get a result (i.e. “match”, “close match”, “no match” or “other”) before initiating the payment, thereby mitigating the risk of fraud.
and screening of transactions for sanctions. Their payment services regulations
- require strong (multifactor) authentication & dynamic security protocols for online transactions, which makes authorization hard to contest & reimbursement of unauthorized transaction unlikely
- make consent/authorization for transactions irrevocable once the payer initiates or the payee receives the payment order, so instant payment transactions are pretty much final
- obligate the user to safeguard credentials & have them bear all losses of unauthorized payments if “with intent or gross negligence” they fail to uphold those obligations.
Zelle likewise provides payee name for verification, offers multifactor authentication, and treats payments as irrevocable, so I’m not sure what more to expect here that isn’t pretty much the same elsewhere.
actual fraud or people sending money to someone they should have known better than to send money too?
What’s actual fraud?
a platform that let’s someone’s unique I’d change and then someone else use that same id
a platform that let’s someone’s unique I’d change and then someone else use that same id
Huh. Why would you think this would be either necessary or sufficient for “real fraud?”
Right, I’d just get their account number and sort code, and can transfer securely for free, normally immediately or at least within 2 hours if their bank also uses SWIFT, which they all do.
If I understand correctly your account number is kinda of a big deal and a security risk to share it. But I may be wrong, nothing in US banking is straightforward or makes sense.
If I understand correctly your account number is kinda of a big deal and a security risk to share it
Depends. It’s not an issue at all for European bank accounts. All you can use it for is to deposit money in my account. Pretty much every company will have their bank account number listed on their website and in their letterhead.
That is what I thought was in the US also, but it seems to not be the case.
If someone has your account and routing number they can pull money out of your account. This is literally how autopay works for your internet or credit card or whatever.
Granted doing so without authorization is fraud and the account you pull into is going to be investigated, but that’s all you really need. Two numbers.
In the UK the bank account number is just a form of ID. Sort code identifies the bank and branch.
When I add a new payee, the bank runs a check to see that the name, sort code and account number match (even if it’s from another bank). Even if they do match there’s a pop-up warning about scams before the transfer goes ahead. Once they’re on my list of payees it’s just click and transfer. I do all that on my phone via my bank’s app.
There’s no way to “pull” money from another account purely using its number. Banking scams do exist here, but they generally rely on bamboozling people into paying money themselves, eg buying gift cards, or giving the scammers control of their phone.
You do need the person’s name as well, but yeah that’s just about it. It’s not great.
That is what I thought, so not something you wanna do to send money to random people.
If you hand someone a check, it has those numbers on it.
Security and PII is a joke in the US. Public info started getting used as if it were private.
If you hand someone a check,
What year is it?!
I’m harping on my friends to set up autodeposit. There is no reason to manually accept money, just let people give you money when they want.
If you need to log in, it’s because you are giving somebody money. Way harder for people to scam if that’s the case for everybody.
I do like that banking apps warn you that your payment might be a scam, but the number one rule I have after 25 years in computers is that nobody reads anything. Ever.
If they’ve opened that app and it’s a scam then they’re getting scammed. No amount of scary messages is going to stop that. They think the FBI takes iTunes vouchers ffs.
Floorp is actually my browser of choice, it’s kind of like the Vivaldi of firefox
I accidentally floorped my underwear the other day when I sneezed too hard.
Love that Floorp!
Sounds like something from Rick and Morty, don’t Floor your plumbus!
Actual question: why don’t Americans just transfer money using a normal baning app? I just have to open the app of my bank. Enter the IBAN, name and amount, confirm and the money will be sent pretty fast. No need for either party to use any third party app.
We don’t have IBAN. Worse, we have routing and account numbers that CAN be used for an ACH transfer but many banks are disabling this functionality on personal accounts because people kept falling for scams.
And now you shouldn’t zelle someone unless you’ve met this person in real life and not online. And when you zelle you enter their phone number and then you get a one verification code sent to your phone number. They really like to complicate things. Where is the fucking cash anymore? I would rather slide someone a round $5 and expect no change than zelle someone $4.50 for the coffee.
Edit: the reason is because of scammers using people personal phone numbers and hacking their carriers (or sending via their phone line idk how they do it tbh) my mother got a text from a friend and bought them $500 in apple gift cards. I heard they now copy speech and can mimic your voice for calls so have a passphrase with your grandma so she doesn’t send you the $100 from her ss check
Zelle is the official method of electronic transfer between different people (transfering to your own accounts doesn’t seem to involve zelle tho)
American banks use ACH, and requires both a routing number (a bank identifier) and the account number.
But theres a reason to prefer a transaction service over direct ACH. And that is settlement time. A service like zelle, the transaction is done in real time as in the money will appear in your account within an hour. But ACH does batch settlements, and that can take up to 3 days (though its ussually a day) before the money appears in your account.
Europe manages it instantly, or in rare cases that I’ve never seen in under 10 seconds. Honestly, three days is sad, its 2025, do they print it and put the boxes on a plane?
They transfer nightly xml files over FTP. It’s a whole thing.
I legit can’t tell if that’s a joke or not
It’s a joke. They actually use FXP orchestrated by a third party, unencrypted.
It’s very efficient.Used to be XML->FTP over SSL when things were running on iron. Healthcare worked that way too (still does in some cases but the iron has been changed out for *nix)
The only joke is this oligarchs-controlled country that intentionally keeps the system as broken as possible to sell the solution.
I would guess some manually processed queue or a batch processor that requires manual intervention to correct failures.
This is madness. Im Australian banking with CBA (a popular bank) and I can send 20k to my mum’s bank account at ANZ (another big bank) and she receives it in her account in 30 seconds or less.
We even have a thing called PayID which links your account deets to a mobile number or email address, and so if I go out to dinner with friends and we want to split the bill, I just tell them to PayID my mobile number and I get it within 30 seconds, no 3rd party FinTech required.
We even have a thing called PayID which links your account deets to a mobile number or email address,
I’m European and I feel like this is the last puzzle piece to eliminate any need for third party payment services. I want this.
Wero is slowly being rolled out in Germany and France (and maybe elsewhere). But not all banks support it yet.
This is madness.
It makes total sense, actually. You just have to look at it from the view point of a corporation - which often helps to make sense of our bullshit.
Our banking system is so antiquated because we have a plethora of third party payment processors whose entire business model is providing those modern features - for a small fee. Part of their profits get redirected to
bribinglobbying Congress members to make sure things stay the same.See also our fucked up tax filing situation.
There’s also the issue that every check you’ve sent has enough information on it to do an ACH. There’s no way to verify unless you’re in person at the bank.
Transaction services at the very least try to verify you’re who you are.
A surprising number of people don’t have a bank.
How do they have or add money in the app then? Sorry, in the UK banks have a legal obligation to provide basic accounts for anyone.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/basic-bank-accounts
https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homelessness/how_to_open_a_bank_account
Its not hard to get a bank account that I’m aware of, but a lot of people have gotten caught up in FinTech. You can get a greendot paycard or have your direct deposits go to a CashApp account.
Most people don’t realize how vulnerable their money is with cash-app and the like. I didn’t either until I tried to add a new debit card to my cashapp account (because I do have a bank) and cashapp locked me out and closed the account while I had over $200 in it. I think its because my account was registered under a VoIP number, but I’ll never know because there’s no human customer service. I just had to take the L and move on.
I swear everything I learn about the US banking system just makes me wonder “how can this be legal?”, being able to just close an account with 200 real dollars and no recourse is just insane.
that technically isn’t a bank, so the answer is banks can’t do that
Haha, another frustration I have with the US financial system, is how seemingly easy it is to avoid legislation by renaming stuff.
It’s not a loan, your honor, it’s “buy now, pay later”. We just described what a loan is, and called it that, so we now expect complete immunity from any existing legislation, thank you very much. And now it seems to be “Earned Wage Access”, which is just uh… payday loans from an app.
I don’t know much about the specifics here, but it certainly sounds an awful lot like a way to store and move your money around. It’s not a banking app, it’s a cash app. Really just feels like your government is willing to play remarkably dumb in exchange for (I assume) lobbying money. A lot of stuff is more profitable with zero consumer protections.
oh god yes.
Second mortgage with tax deductable interest?
No, no, that’s now a Home Equity line of credit. Same thing, but you don’t get a lump sum of money, and the interest is not deductible.
is a giftcard a bank then somehow what about a stock brokerage account that allows storing USD? defining these as “not banks” makes tons of sense because amazon shouldn’t need to know my SSN for me to have a giftcard ballance with them where as banks do.
Actually getting the bank to recognise this can be a struggle, however. When my wife wanted one, some of them were insistent that they couldn’t give them to people from overseas. Only Nationwide would let her open one.
And in the cold dark of 2025, there might not even be any banks left near you. Most of them are shut or online only. The entire Peak District area has exactly one banking hub, and that’s run by the post office after the last bank closed last year.
That’s great. Canada has very strong credit union adoption. The US is often more predatory. Banks can put people into minimum balance type accounts and fee you until the account runs dry. Not all, but some do. If you live in a rural area, you may not have many options. There’s a host of reasons. https://www.fdic.gov/household-survey
Credit unions can be predatory, too. The US’s largest credit union, Navy Federal, has one of the highest rates of fees charged per customer, even compared to banks. https://www.nclc.org/resources/top-overdraft-fee-offenders-hitting-civilian-military-families/
Cash exists?
What, just feed banknotes into your phone?
I don’t understand the core concept of “have or add money in the app”?
Do you mean like adding money to some sort of pre-paid card in Apple Pay or Google Wallet? 'Cuz I can’t use either of those (GrapheneOS), and even if I could I’m pretty happy just using physical credit cards or cash anyways. Or are you talking about something else?
All these apps are basically a third party “digital wallet”, like PayPal. The market exists because US bank suck at quickly transferring money to eachother, and occasionally you want to give a friend money without having cash or waiting 3 business days.
got it. yeah, I hate relying on paypal or venmo for this shit, but here we are
you don’t?
That’s not a thing here.
I’m an American who doesn’t transfer through my banking account because I don’t trust or use banks. You can use our banking apps for that iirc via zelle which is built in to those but I don’t know anyone who likes it.
Too bad there’s never been some sort of federated infrastructure for managing monetary transactions. It would be an awesome thing if it existed, and people definitely wouldn’t just naively bandwagon against it and simply call it a scam if it did.
There is, it’s called SEPA instant payment, and every single bank uses it. The tiny catch is that you have to be in Europe for it.
Also called payid. Instant payment, every single bank supports it, can register your phone number, email address, business number to your account so anyone with one of the Jose details can pay you. Tiny catch is you have to be in Australia
Also called Pix. Instant payment, every single bank supports it, can register your phone number, email address, business number or get a random key to your account so anyone with one of the those details can pay you. Tiny catch is you have to be in Brazil (Btw I heard we are exporting it to other countries)
Cries in Swedish.
Heh, while crypto itself isn’t federated like email, the means of running it is. Lots of seperate people/orgs running blockchain ledgers.
Unfortunately, it’s more or less a persistent pyramid scam that we’re just riding around on the currents of… But I’m not sure that national currency is that far off that description either. We’re riding on the ripples from the oligarchs in power.
Made a trip to LA with the kids this summer and the surfing lessons guy made me pay extra for paying him on PayPal because that’s the only payment app I can use as a Canadian.
Laughs in PIX
Visa and mastercard are actively trying to shut pix down, fuck those guys, I only use pix now
So true though. I used to prefer card but now I’m using PIX much more frequently out of pure spite
lol nice, keep up the good work brotha!
