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Comment by nfriedly | Hacker News Reader

Everything that's recurring: mortgage, electricity, insurance, internet, iphone payment plan, etc.

My wife handles our groceries and such. We actually have two separate accounts: "mine" gets the paycheck, pays the bills, and transfers money to "hers" twice a month.

We also have a third "giving" account that gets a bit of money set aside to give to or buy things for other people. This can be anything from a car repair to just buying someone lunch.

Direct debit is fine if you trust the other side not to screw up and charge too much, leak your credentials, etc, but I've seen exactly that happen several times. You're basically giving them to withdraw as much as they want from your bank account.

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This confuses me a little -- the UK has the direct debit guarantee which is incredibly ironclad. If I think something is funny, I call the bank and the money is back in my account immediately -- without argument or any reason required.

The DD is then cancelled and the company can argue with me, sure, but I get my money back.

Yea, our banking system in the states is pretty behind.

I've had it happen to me once and a family member once where we each had to close a bank account to make someone stop taking out money. Both were a while ago, so it may have gotten better in recent years, but it burned my trust in the system.

> Direct debit is fine if you trust the other side not to ...leak your credentials

Woah - just for your information, there is no credential sharing required here.

FWIW, some services do in fact use your bank username and password to instantly verify your account rather than the usual "we made two small deposits, tell us the amount when they come through in a few days".

But, I was mainly referring to the account and routing number. Anyone with those two numbers and access to the ACH system can drain your account. I know one person who wrote a check to a bill collector, then the bill collector entered their numbers into the their ACH system and started taking regular withdrawals from the account without the owners permission. The owner had to close the account to make it stop.

That one was like 15 years ago - I think the laws around debt collections are better today, but the ACH system is still fundamentally the same system.

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