Electronic funds transfer in the US, stone age?

You still are not reading. A Raspberry Pi can run android. It can send and receive SMS text messages, but if you are sending images, then you don't really want to send SMS text messages, you want to send MMS messages which a Raspberry Pi can also do. No need for a cell phone or a cell phone plan.

Is that clear enough? If anything I've said sounds like "cell phone" to you, you are not reading correctly.

Ah! There is the problem. You seem to think that every bank connects to every payee directly. That would be like the old bulletin board systems where you had to dial in directly to each server you wanted to communicate with. That would be a HUGE amount of work on the part of

The current US system has a central facility which registers payees and handles the payments. Since checking accounts already had the ACH for all this, in the US they decided to use this for direct electronic payments as well. I believe this decision was made almost 20 years ago. I know I was using online banking with direct ACH transfers around 2000.

You don't know how the system works in the EU. You just know you don't like the delays here. When you know enough to explain how to improve it I'll be happy to listen.

When there are cheques involved, it is /not/ "online banking". It's just a service to print cheques rather than writing them by hand.

If I print out a letter, fax it to you (assuming I could find a fax machine - they are almost non-existent this side of the pond), and you read it, it is not email - it's just using a computer to make snail mail slightly less slow.

When we in Europe say "online banking", we mean everything is computer-to-computer. No printouts. No cheques. No bank employees printing things out so that it can be posted to someone else and another bank employee reads it and types it into a different computer. No week-long delays, or risks of things getting lost in the post, cheques bouncing, etc. An online transfer takes /seconds/ in most cases. /That/ is what online banking means.

She knew here business fine - she just had no experience with something that had not been in common use in this country since she was a small kid. And no, she did not "let the customer know that the bank was incompetent". She told me /she/ did not know how to handle it, and got help from someone more experienced (who also had not had to handle a cheque for many years). Would you have preferred that she lied and told me "yes, that's fine, I'll fix this"?

I know nothing about what passes for "customer service" in the USA, but here in Norway, staff are expected to be honest, friendly, helpful, and to talk to customers. You "excuse yourself and discretely see the manager" if you think the customer is trying to do something illegal and you don't want to let them know your suspicions. But in general, if one staff member has to get help from another staff member, they will tell you exactly why.

the early eighties (about a decade after shillings were dropped from the British currency). The bank was fine with that, but I wonder what they would have done with a non-zero shilling count.

What is the medium for this? Who provides the protocol and if needed, the intermediate handing?

We don't need to know; it just happens.

Similarly, we don't need to understand the vast ecosystem of companies that are involved in credit card processing and payments.

Joerge is complaining that we don't have such instant transfers of money here in the US. I'd like to know just how it is accomplished.

Magic, as in "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

As the wise man said, the obvious Clarkian corollary is: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."

So quit gassing and get back to work. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I don't know either. But I can tell you that it works, and usually does so without much problem or delay. Transfer times in seconds is within the same bank. Transfers between banks might take a little longer (I can't say off hand, because the only cases I have measured are within the same bank). International transfers between my father's bank in Scotland and mine in Norway are usually next working day - international transfers always have a few extra checks to make sure you are not laundering money, exceeding tax-free transfer limits, and so on.

I suspect the underlying reason is that people in Europe are quite good at cooperating and learning from each other (having learned the hard way). The banks have sat down together to discuss how to make it easier to pass money around, for the benefit of everyone. In the USA, everything is a competition and everyone wants to do things their own way (with an absolute conviction that /their/ way is the best, despite glaring evidence to the contrary). So American banks won't talk to other American banks, much less other countries, if they can get away with it.

A shilling, at 20 to the pound, is exactly 5 new pence, a non-zero pence amount would have been more challenging, but no doubt, they have a standardised procedure to handle any fractioanl remainder.

You missed the salient point. Please explain how exactly the _picture_ of the check _gets_ to the bank in a way that they will accept it as legit.

Piece of cake. All they need is the account number, the routing number and what to write into the comment line. The latter so that the recipient knows which of their internal client accounts to credit the amount to. This is how I pay the news server I am using.

If I can do it in a matter of seconds and all Europeans do it in a matter of seconds why is this such a "HUGE" amount of work for a US bank?

If this clearing house system is so sluggish it's time to scrap it, look at why other countries do it better and then adopt their method. This is how Taiwan revamped their ailing health care system. They chose a potpourri of solutions concocted after visiting a dozen countries.

See above. You can also read it on the web.

They already knew it way before, decades ago. Merchants that sold me merchandise in Europe would simply have their account number and routing number on the invoice (it's usually on all their letters, in the footer of the first page), I did an electronic transfer to that account, done. Takes a few minutes, not days or weeks. That's how it's done right.

Usually a few minutes. I believe since a few years there is even a law that online payments within the EU must be received within one day. AFAIK that includes money paid to a party in another EU country.

In the US we almost live in the stone age when it comes to banking. WRT online stock trading I think the US is generally more advanced. Banks in Europe often charge fat fees which are much more modest in the US. Also, stock trades are performed almost instantaneously here unless, of course, you set triggers. I cannot understand how on one side we have a very modern and well oiled machinery for stock and bond trading on one hand and then a banking system stuck in yesteryear on the other. Makes no sense.

I strongly believe there isn't a willingness to improve it. That it could be done with ease is clearly evidenced by the credit and debit card systems in the US. There you can pay someone thousands of miles away and the money switches accounts in milliseconds.

An rpi has a camera. Running android it has access to all the same apps that run on a phone. What part is missing?

the phone part

I know here there is lot of stuff that is easier to do on a phone than any other device I guess because the phone is considered a more secure device, being tied to a serial number, phone number, subscription and running signed apps

I get tired if you only half way explaining things. *WHAT* is how you pay the newserver? If you are doing this through a US bank you are using ACH transfers. Is that ok or not ok?

You seem to be complaining this is not good enough. If not, then what would be the mechanism for faster service.

You have *no idea* how they are doing it in the EU.

You sound like the republicans and Obamacare, scrap it, without having any idea of what to replace it with... except something "better".

Your link says nothing about how it is implemented other than referring to "commercial and technical frameworks". Why don't you set up the "commercial and technical frameworks" and we'll all use it?