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Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Free, instant transfers are already the status quo in a lot of the world, as of course they do not require blockchain. SEPA Instant Payment in the EU, for instance. In fact they're way faster than a Bitcoin transaction much of the time - and obviously way less expensive ($0 vs. $5-60).

The US is moving to 24/7 free, instant payments as RTP rolls out. [1]

The US has been quite far behind historically on this front however they are closing this gap, probably motivated in no small part by Bitcoin.

[1] https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp

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Costs me €1.50 per transfer in Germany. Also costs me in Singapore. It should just be the be default.

Here in India, I can make transfers via UPI for free. For larger amounts, I can use IMPS which costs INR 5 ($0.067). Both are instant and have highly usable apps from trustworthy providers.

I guess in India they can’t get away with this nonsense

While it's true in some regions, most of the globe banking is still very slow. In any digital currency, like cryptocoins of CBDC it's the same globally, not per region.

Global transfers are slow because they generally undergo some form of manual review for risk and AML/KYC. Crypto is fast because it pretends that this isn't a requirement. That only works as long as it's small enough people don't care. Once people care, things will look a lot different than they do now.

There's no reason whatsoever that a crypto payment would be faster than a traditional payment - in fact, there's a ton of reasons the lower bound is much slower.

This is an intentional process decision, combined with some (replaceable) outdated technology. However, the former strictly dominates the latter.

Funnily enough my transferwise international payments are basically instant.

With Borderless/Multi-Currency it's even cooler, since it grants you local banking details in many different locales, so someone can pay you via ACH, FedWire, SEPA, EFT, etc and have that value reflected in your account almost immediately (depending on the transfer method) and (depending on the transfer method) without charge.

Isn't this convenience at the cost of trusting a third party, I.e. Transferwise, with your money? They can unilaterally hold, delay, or stop you from using your money.

Yes, that is true, however Wise is a heavily regulated entity (in the sense that they are regulated simultaneously by a number of global regulators). Broadly speaking they would have to have a very good reason - a legal one - to preclude you from accessing your money. The flip side is you have a legal pathway to recovering your value in the unlikely situation you describe. Pros and cons.

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