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Comment by odiroot | Hacker News Reader

> I make payments to the benelux, france, germany, spain and poland, and they go all over the push mechanism. Direct debit is for utilities, and that's about it.

SEPA direct debit is a really really popular thing in Germany. Most utilities prefer (quite understandably) to pull from you instead of waiting for your transfer. Even landlords usually give you an agreement form to pull your rent out of your account.

I got used to that and recently tried to use a Polish bank account to pay on Amazon and surprisingly it didn't work. Amazon has sent me an automated email with a demand for a (push) transfer, sadly with added fee for the trouble.

Most people in Poland actually do transfers manually, direct debit is not really a thing. On the other hand there's this BLIK thing for instant transfers, even across banks.

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I find Blik to be one of the best payment methods ever invented.

It gives you a one-time-use 6-digit code that is valid for no more than two minutes. When the code is given to a merchant, either on line or in person, you get a popup with the amount and merchant name which you need to manually approve. You can give that code out over the phone to a family member who's currently at the store buying things for you, or to a child who's trying to get something for themselves. This is extremely convenient while still being secure, and it allows for secure payments on shared, malware-infested computers.

Some online services also give you the option to remember your device for future use. If you decide to do so, you will get a notification the next time you're trying to pay there, which you still need to approve. This is more convenient than typing in a code, while still being as secure.

This system is pretty resistant to fraud (you always need to approve the amount in your banking app), while allowing for irreversible payments, which merchants like.

> This system is pretty resistant to fraud (you always need to approve the amount in your banking app), while allowing for irreversible payments, which merchants like.

This sounds like a great system, except that irreversible payment part. That’s only a feature for merchants and usually gets used to harm consumers in my experience.

There are also some third parties which utilize the fact that transfers within the same bank are instant - they have bank accounts in all of those and a settlement system built on top of that. You transfer the money to them, and then they send a transfer directly from the bank of recipient. It's nearly instant, but has some limits to it (several thousand euros).

In fact it's quite jarring when you have companies try to do something in Polish market and they don't do basic research into payment methods.

Take for example Luxxotica - I was buying some glasses as a gift yesterday, and they support two payment methods:

- card payment

- PayPal

Paypal hasn't been popular for years with all the other alternatives, and many people are wary of using cards to buy goods over the internet. In fact my card payment was blocked (which essentially never happens in any other methods) and I went to buy the glasses physically at a reseller.

>You transfer the money to them, and then they send a transfer directly from the bank of recipient

Since few years banks also provide APIs for redirecting to transfer form prefilled with payment processor details, so you don't have to enter them manually.

From what I know there is also a different reason for the weirdnesses in Germany. Banks actually charged quite a lot for online transactions from your bank card. German shops are very cost sensitive here (why in many some time ago in most places you could not pay with credit card). So what they do is they use an intermediate that collects all those signed mandates. It even worked fully offline like with credit cards in the old days. It is crazy if you try to read the terms and conditions on a standard supermarket bill.

> I got used to that and recently tried to use a Polish bank account to pay on Amazon and surprisingly it didn't work. Amazon has sent me an automated email with a demand for a (push) transfer, sadly with added fee for the trouble.

That might be a function of Poland not being in the euro zone. AFAIK SEPA Direct Debit is only for transfers in Euro. Even if you tried to use a Euro bank account in Poland, either your bank or Amazon might not have bothered to implement it.

Yep, I did use an EUR account. You may be right about the lack of proper implementation.

Did you have Marketplace charges? These are USD only.

When they launched the SEPA direct debit option a couple years ago I tried it and the debit bounced back.

Eventually I did not have the need for marketplace instances anymore, then I tried it again and it worked.

> SEPA direct debit is a really really popular thing in Germany. Most utilities prefer (quite understandably) to pull from you instead of waiting for your transfer. Even landlords usually give you an agreement form to pull your rent out of your account.

Landlords benefit from it because it makes it harder for your to lower your rent in case there are issues with the place that warrant it. If they can withdraw the rent directly, you'd have to undo that payment, pay the lowered amount manually etc. which makes it more hassle for you and also increases the risk of screwing up.

Not exactly:

You could sign a contract with your landlord, then revoke the so called "SEPA mandate" afterwards and you can forcibly switch to "manual payment" each month, since the SEPA mandate is not necessarily required or a "legally-necessary intrinsic component of the contract" (check for example: https://deutschesmietrecht.de/mietvertrag/662-mietzahlung-ei... )

Tough, depends on which type of relation you want to have to your landlord ;-)

True, that works as well.

Either way as a tenant it's best to do manual payments (even if they're automated on your end) each month so that lowering rent, if necessary, is straightforward.

I'm not sure how it's with other banks, but on both my NL banks revoking the permission is 2 clicks away. If there is an issue that escalates to the need to partially withhold payment, that is the least of your hurdles in NL since you need to get permission from an independent government commission.

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