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Comment by zkms | Hacker News Reader

> What we need is instant clearing, 24/7/365. Nobody cares that it's Sunday. Nobody cares that it's Presidents Day.

UK has had near-real-time transfers for a while, it's called "Faster Payments" and there's no fees for end-users. It's also a "push" system (and not a "pull" system like ACH) which has serious advantages -- you can send money to anyone given their sort code and account number, and those numbers do not need to be kept private. With ACH if you have someone's routing number and account number you can pull money from their account without them needing to authorise it.

Same-day ACH is just ACH with more batches, it's the same old shit cooked a little faster.

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Faster payments is one of the best systems I've used having lived in several countries. Paypal funds to a UK bank usually takes a few minutes.

Here in Canada they have the Interac E-Transfer which is money by email and not usually free $1-$2 per transfer.

It also has a question/answer security component which can be annoying if you simply want to send someone money.

RBC and TD now waive the e money transfer fee.

It also allows for things like one of the UK Bitcoin trading sites that offers payment by bank transfer where it generally takes less time for the bank transfer to reach them than it takes for the BTC transfer to confirm.

Which site is that? Last two times I tried to buy bitcoin in the UK, I had to send Euros to some Polish bank.

https://bittylicious.com/

Caveat: It's been probably a year at least since I used them last, but the times I've used them before it worked very well.

The only reason you do want to keep your account details secret is that people can set up direct debits on your account. This happened to Jeremy Clarkson after he posted his account number and sort code in a newspaper column and challenged people to take some money [0]

[0] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7174760.stm

Anyone doing so would also require the name and address of the account holder.

Or a dodgy enough place willing to look the other way when setting up the direct debit, because at least as of 9 years ago it was possible to do so when I was selling mobile contracts. Some would do so, and one of those is in jail now; so I guess it's not worth it, but the "validation" definitely wasn't foolproof then

The linked BBC article says the victim hinted at how the public could find his address, so someone who knew how the system works called Clarkson's bluff with a £500 monthly debit to a UK charity.

Apparently, the UK system was designed to support push and pull transfer modes.

At least with a direct debit, my bank has a list of companies authorized to pull money from my account (they are all supposed to have a signed direct debit agreement on file) and I can revoke from my bank's website. Is there something similar in the US?

Not even close :(

With my bank (known for its great service) you can call to place an ACH freeze but you have to know the vendor's identification or rough amount but you may end up with collateral damage (stopping a payment you do want to go through).

Indeed. SEPA direct debit is disabled by default on Finnish bank accounts(), I believe for exactly this reason (and because no service here actually uses it).
Instead we use an e-invoice system that requires explicit signup from the user with their bank, usually via the bank web service.

() I checked OP and Nordea. I guess it could be enabled on some other banks but it is hard to find information about this service.

>With ACH if you have someone's routing number and account number you can pull money from their account without them needing to authorise it.

I still don't get how anyone thought that's a good idea.

When you understand that it’s based on checks, it makes perfect sense. Not that checks are a good system, but if the alternative is a check then it’s the same downside.

>When you understand that it’s based on checks, it makes perfect sense.

That just explains how the USA got into this mess. Nothing about any of this "makes perfect sense".

I guess it's a bit like the imperial vs metric system thing. The US system is obviously inferior but they're too invested in it to change it.

In Chile we have that. Instant payments with shareable information.

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