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Comment by baxtr | Hacker News Reader

Instant payments, aka “instant SEPA” will be available soon also in the EU

https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-insta...

UniCredit introduced instant payments in Germany and Italy in November 2017, other large banks in Germany are due to follow this summer.

https://www.unicreditgroup.eu/en/press-media/press-releases/...

Also Intesa have them in Italy.

Too bad everything else is abysmal when it comes to technology and payments in Germany.

Most places don't accept anything besides cash for payments. Opening a bank account still involves a ton of paperwork. Official mobile apps, if they even exist, are horrible. Waiting for 2 days for SEPA transfer, even though it's usually technically done within hours. No realtime transactions for card transactions (even though they have the data right away), etc.

Unless the "SCT Inst" becomes a law that every bank must obey, I doubt majority of banks will have it implemented even within 5 years.

Credit and debit card acceptance could definitely be better (even though I was doing all right in Berlin), but I don't agree about opening bank accounts:

- N26: it took me literally 10 minutes. Identification via video chat.

- comdirect: as far as I remember, I mailed them one 4-page form, dropped by the post office for the PostIdent and that was it.

- Postbank (I needed an IBAN quickly while waiting for comdirect ;) : I walked in, everything was done in 15 minutes.

Now try the same thing in France. Online banks typically ask an initial wire transfer from another French bank since they cannot check your identity directly. And then you need to provide proof of address and salary payslips (or tax receipts). And in the end it easily takes 3-4 weeks to receive all documents and your payment card.

N26 is the only one that has semi useful applications and web interface.

My main problem with them is that they're first and foremost a startup, not a bank. Some issues I've had with them include double transactions, failed scheduled transactions, horrible 9-5 support, unable to unlock card because their web page was down for 24h. On top of that their security practices are horrible[0]

>I mailed them one 4-page form, dropped by the post office for the PostIdent and that was it.

And then you got 4-5 letters over the next couple of weeks. Not to mention that postident itself is a plague.

>I walked in, everything was done in 15 minutes.

And you walked out with a bunch of paperwork, and additional letters sent via post.

I've tried to open or had accounts with the following banks: N26, commerzbank, comdirect, dkb, fidor, ing diba

Dealing with any of them is like traveling back 20 years in time. Comparing it to countries that have it worse is always easy, but that does not mean that banks in Germany are not atrocious.

[0] - https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7969-shut_up_and_take_my_money

N26 is a bank, they have a license. Given their growth I think they didn't do too bad overall, and I've never had a problem using their MasterCard as my main payment method while living in Germany. Granted, I wouldn't have used them as my main bank two years ago, but I think they got there.

And while video chat is better than PostIdent, I don't think a trip to your local post office is that bad compared to the alternatives.

As for the ton of paper in the mail, you're right, it's annoying, but that's in no way specific to banking, everything is like that in Germany.

In short, sure, it could be much better, but it could be much worse too.

I think his point was that you made it sounds easier than it really was for some reason.

Regarding the second bank you wrote, "and that was it." In reality, you admit that there was tons of paperwork that took days to receive. So, no, that wasn't "it."

Paper != paperwork. I filled out one and only one form. It's an online bank so then of course, you receive some of the stuff in the mail, I don't see how it could be different. I've used banks in five different countries, went through all kinds of identification and second factors that exist on the market, and in Germany today, I don't really see how it could be easier. But please enlighten me.

> My main problem with them is that they're first and foremost a startup, not a bank.

N26 has a full banking license.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/21/number26-is-now-a-true-ban...

Yeah, I meant that more in the sense that they focus more on new fancy half broken mobile first features than on what makes bank a bank - things like working transactions.

When I opened the bank account with the bank that now has my mortgage (in New Zealand), I was here on a visitor’s visa, and had literally been in a country only a few days.

I was able to open a bank account and get a card in 15 minutes. A few days later, I had a NZ tax number.

Since then this is my benchmark for ease :)

New Zealand is a dream for this kind of thing. Banks are actually helpful and money transfers between random people have been easy for decades. Even the NZ government is well organized - I was constantly impressed at what you could do online on well designed web sites.

When I moved to the US 4 years ago I hadn't written a cheque in 15 years; I was in for a rude surprise.

We had this years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDEAL

Personally I think it should be NORMAL in 2018 to transfer money between bank accounts in near real time. Without transaction fees.

This is not only meant for commerce like iDEAL is. If anything it is supposed to work like the 'send to phone number' services offered by ING or ABN, for instance.

This is more like Swish in Sweden.

In Estonia and likely Sweden and Finland you can already do this. I use the Swedbank mobile app, and can send anyone money same-day. If it's a known account and under a user-specifiable limit (eg 30 eur) I don't even need to authenticate other than opening the app; to add a new person and account, or a large amount, I need to authenticate.

I couldn't find details on it, but will this system allow for transfers based on phone number or email or will it still be based on IBAN?

I'd actually prefer it if it was just IBAN. No need to entangle my phone and email into that.

It will be based on the IBAN/BIC.

The backend is still IBAN/BIC, but some banks also use this to offer phone number transfers.

So if you use the phone number transfers from the Sparkassen, the transfers themselves will run over SEPA ICT

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