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Comment by auslander | Hacker News Reader

> you can't risk to have anything even remotely approaching a monopoly in any part of the systems involved in making transactions.

AFAIK US is a monopoly for international money transfer. You just cannot bypass a US intermediary bank and US Dollar conversion.

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There is not truth to this. How is there an American monopoly on money transfers?

Most countries have central banks that settle and controls its own currency. Bigger banks have accounts at the central banks and can settle cross border without a problem. The US has nothing to with it unless you are buying/selling USD (which, by the way, you can do outside of the US banking system, if you like) or you are buying selling some obscure currency which needs to be exchanged via the USD (or any other liquid currency for that matter).

I regularly transfer money from AUD to IDR or EUR, and from Australian bank accounts to Indonesian or Euro, without any apparent transition with US intermediary banks and USD conversions. I did surprise someone from Eastern Europe when I was in Indonesia that I had never touched USD, so I guess in some parts of the world USD is important.

Many of my non-mediated transactions go through American institutions (e.g. Mastercard, Visa) but not all.

And if anything does go via USD I don't notice it, even in price; it's clearly cheaper to go AUD->IDR than to go AUD->USD->IDR.

> I did surprise someone from Eastern Europe when I was in Indonesia that I had never touched USD

Thanks, as I thought, most international money transfers involve USD and, because of USD, have to use US based intermediaries.

International bank transfers within europe most certainly do not go through USD. If you want to send money to/from Europe to USA without a conversion, it is also possible, but you need a bank account in the currency you want to transfer on both sides.

You're likely thinking of the dollar being "unavoidable" as a unit of settlement due to its status as main world reserve currency, but even that's metaphorical and in any case a state & institutional level thing.

Just think about it - how would that even work?

Dollar or not is not that important. Forcing US intermediary is.

There is no forced US intermediaries. What are you referring to?

"U.S. control over transactions within the EU.

..The transaction was automatically routed through the US, possibly because of the USD currency used in the transaction, which is how the United States was able to seize the funds.." [0]

Also: "The U.S. Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) enforces U.S. economic sanctions programs ... and any person or entity physically located in the United States (including branches of foreign corporations)" [2]. And most foreign banks do have US branches. And if transaction is in US Dollars, OFAC applies too [1]. I can dig deeper, down the rabbit hole :)

All right. Seems like if a transaction involves USD, it must pass US based correspondent bank.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Worldwide_Interban...

[1] https://nacm.org/pdfs/webinars/FCIBWebinar_Compliance_OFAC_U...

[2] https://www.riskscreen.com/kyc360/of-counsel/ofac-compliance...

the whole european region (+ schengen) does not use swift at all (at least not since 2018)

Yes, It was noted in this thread few times. I'm talking about all other transfers, not EU-EU. Even then, the wikipedia link shows that one EU-EU transaction which involved USD, was affected.

Even between EU countries? I wouldn't think so, but I'm no expert.

EU internal ones are likely an exception. Not an expert myself, it just consolidated in my mind as a fact from all the books and articles over the years.

EU internal transfers are most likely made by SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) infrastructure (with European clearing entities) or for large sums by direct communication/deals between the European banks. Why would any US entity be needed for this?

Exactly. And since most corporations I deal with have at least an office in a European country, I almost never have to deal with US banks.

And those intermediaries are very closely watched by entities with power to affect the system, not by powerless "consumers" who's only choice is to shrug and choose another provider (if available).

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