Hacker News Reader

Comment by mixmastamyk | Hacker News Reader

Hmm, most other countries have free transfers between bank accounts. It's just the US (maybe a few others) still stuck in the stone age.

View on HN

ACH bank transfers are free in the US too, just takes a few days. Personal transfers with Venmo or paypal are free too in most cases. The fees are for credit cards which make up almost all online transactions and have fees everywhere in the world.

Lots of other countries have debit cards linked to accounts with standing credit, instead of the "credit card" that you pay off every month.

These debit cards very low fees, sometimes they work as both debit and visa card, so you can use them abroad too.

We have debit cards in the US too... that’s how apps like Venmo work.

Who gets the seller fees?

In the US, you only get a piece of the action if you use a credit card. Otherwise you still pay the higher, transaction-fee-included price, but you don't get any part of the transaction fee.

I see many stores with fees for using foreign credit cards. Like ~1 USD..

Or I guess the seller pockets the fee.

> ACH bank transfers are free in the US too, just takes a few days.

One-day ACH has been standardized and has begun to be rolled out.

Perhaps, but in the UK I can do instant bank transfers for free. Very useful for settling small debts between friends and such things.

The EU limited fees to .3% on credit and .2% on debit cards, and made charging the consumer card fees illegal everywhere though. That's a big improvement on what was otherwise ~3%

Still not as ubiquitous as it should be.

In NZ for example, folks have their bank account # proudly displayed over a plate of cookies for purchase at 25 cents on a whim.

It still vexes me that I can't instantly transfer money from my bank to a friend's account without paying, or using a third-party like Venmo or Paypal.

Most banks are using Zelle now, all but instant in my experience

Zelle is restrictive, daily limits are quite low. It's also not always instant, depends on how much risk your bank considers you.

I ran into this issue today. Frustratingly low limits ($1000) for my bank.

Also, Zelle is a third party, but one owned by a bank collective so it gets a deeper integration. Potato, Potahto.

Yup. Woke up this morning, FB message with a spreadsheet. Some friends going on holiday together, one has taken responsibility for the house we're renting, got the bill today, cut it up, sent it out. I copy-posted the amount into a web form from my bank and it was in their account later this morning at zero cost to either of us.

you can transfer free between friends using services like paypal, doesn't that count?

paypal isn't a bank, though.

GP mentioned:

>free transfers between bank accounts

does it really matter if it was done through some third party service?

Absolutely, given that Paypal can freeze your money indefinitely for arbitrary reasons (and has a long history of doing so).

Does it for consumers? I thought it’s only for sellers. That’s also been my experience.

Why put another potentially malicious, rent seeking third-party between you and your friend's banks?

PayPal is registered as a bank in the EU, in Luxembourg if I am not mistaken.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com