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?
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)
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.
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 bribing lobbying Congress members to make sure things stay the same.
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.
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
The only joke is this oligarchs-controlled country that intentionally keeps the system as broken as possible to sell the solution.
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)
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.
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.
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.