Have you transferred money across borders to an individual lately?
As much as I want to criticize this FB is probably in an excellent position to navigate the kyc minefields.
Actually yes.
From Switzerland to my brother in Belgium. It was transferred on the same business day at no expense to him or me. Look up SEPA[1] for details.
Just because the American banking system is the complete shits this does not necessarily apply to the rest of the world.
Do you think it's as easy for those in India, China, or Kenya, for instance?
It's probably easier to transfer funds via M-Pesa then from a bank account in Delaware to a bank account in Detroit
And, at least in theory, America is a wealthy country without any borders.
I can easily pay a street seller from my US bank account, directly to his/her phone, in seconds.
Pains me to say this because I had this international bank/credit card to M-Pesa transfers idea a decade ago, a professor dissuaded me from pursuing it.
5 years later, a bunch of services launched and many are thriving.
Actually yes. Take a look at xoom.com and it's competitors for example (flat rate money transfers at a fraction of swift fees). Only issue is getting money out of those countries. But that is a political and national issue.
Or for people without a bank account?
> Or for people without a bank account?
I'm having strong doubts that you actually understand how the world banks. There are hundreds of millions of people who don't have bank accounts, and use electronic payments through their cell providers.
Venezuela barely has a functioning electrical grid, so cryptocurrency would not seem to be a foolproof solution there.
Check out IBM world wire.
Also the SCT inst scheme has started being rolled out.
edit: also, those banks are UK ones. I'm not inclined to open accounts there with Brexit going on. Foreign accounts are also a pain for tax admin.
On another level, why should the state have a list of my accounts at all? It already sees all the accounts at banks within their territory. They don't need to concern themselves with accounts outside their jurisdiction.
In the context of income taxes, it should be enough to report total earnings, regardless of which specific account holds them.
Yes, the SEPA scheme is old and working only during business days according to the TARGET2 calendar, but you definitely can process a transfer within a couple hours (my online stock broker does).
Sending money across borders is historically super complex and expensive, you're right. The WorldBank estimates that it costs an average of 8% in total fees (transfer fees + exchange rate mark-up) to transfer money internationally.
For international transfers with banks and cash-based money transfers, this is still true.
But, in the last 10 years, we've seen hundreds of new online money transfer operators innovating in the field (way before crypto) starting with Xoom in the first wave and then TransferWise, Remitly, WorldRemit, InstaRem, Azimo and hundreds of others...
Sending $300 to Mexico to any agent location to pickup cash will cost you $2 with the cheapest option: https://www.monito.com/send-money/united-states/mexico/usd/m...
$1000 from Canada to a bank account in the Philippines in minutes? $6 https://www.monito.com/send-money/canada/philippines/cad/php...
etc...
These new innovative services are up to 10x cheapers than banks or traditional cash-based money transfers, often faster and much more convenient.
Yes, frequently. Using TransferWise or FairFx, depending on where the recipient was, but inclusive of Thailand, USA, Ecuador, and Canada. The process was entirely painless, fast, and the transfer was cheap as chips, while bringing to bear the full weight of European bank regulations to protect me as a customer.
I wish more people on HN would understand the importance of this. I've said it here before but I think it's worth repeating. Banks want to send your money internationally and, as you've said, are more than capable of sending your money quickly and cheaply. Any time an international bank transfer is a pain in the ass it's by design to protect consumer interests and/or to protect government interests. There's a reason you can't just rock up to the teller at Wells Fargo and send $1,000 to North Korea the same way you can if you needed to send $1,000 to Canada.
I don't care about the reason that banks have for sabotaging their own service. That is not my problem.
I used TransferWise once a few years ago from USD to CAD and it cost ~1.4% all-in. That's cheaper than my bank but still very expensive if you're transferring your whole salary every pay period like I was. I ended up using Bitcoin instead.
Is it cheaper now?
How does using a blockchain/cryptocurrency make it easier to sidestep regulations compared to a regular old database?
But again - it's not about regulations. It's about interoperability. Centralised money transfer stuff is not new (PayPal? Banks?), the problem with it was always integration with other systems.
Also, if it's a centralised database, it's hard to build real startups on top of it. Look at what happened to startups building on top of Twitter APIs when Twitter decided to change them. If you build some parts on top of a public blockchain, it gives guarantees related to accessibility of those parts in the future.
I guess you could claim some sort of providence of money movements using a git like system but realistically I think it's likely the marketing department had far more to do with the decision than the engineering dept.
You only have to look at wechat's dominance thoughout Asia to realise whatapp could get absolutely blown away by the all-in-one messenger/payment system if it took off in the West.
You cannot compare blockchain with a regular database. A blockchain is more like an append-only store, or a WORM drive where each "file" or "record" is digitally authenticated and signed/hashed in a way to make undetectable modifications extremely difficult and/or expensive.
Yes, you can. That it is different, and the resulting difference in utility, is the exact point of such a comparison.
Wetern Union, HiFX, PayPal, MoneyGram,Azimo work just fine.