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Comment by neom | Hacker News Reader

Cazy how civilized the Canadian system is. You can whip open your banking app, enter the email of anyone with a Canadian bank account, link is generated, money is instintly deposited. People basically use this for everything except regular debt purchases (and even then, in instances that you forget your wallet, non-chain stores will usually let you etransfer someone). It's how I pay rent etc. No fees. It's been like this for ~15 years

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So instead of 'which number do you want me to send your money to' it's 'which email address do you want me to send your money to'? Great?

The recipient token can also be a phone number capable of receiving a text message.

Sure fine, to be clear I meant bank account number - using an email address (or phone number) isn't clearly better to me (I think it's worse?) in any way, that's all.

Don't you need more than just an account number? Either way yes, it's a lot easier to put someones email address into a box and a $ and hit send. I'd love to know who you bank with such that you can just give an account number, no name etc and have the money move, in my 30 years of banking (Scotland, Canada, USA) I've never heard of that.

Name (only optionally checked), sort code & account number (which are not meaningfully distinct to an end user and I meant both by 'account number'). UK.

Email seems at best no better to me, since why would I assume the address I use to speak to someone is the same one they use for their bank account? Or the particular bank account they want the money sent to?

I think you're misunderstanding how the system works. The email or txt is just to send the link/code. In theory you could open the email and copy/paste the link to someone else and they could deposit it into their own account. You just click the link, it directs you to select your banking portal, you login like you would and accept the funds into your account. Works on web and apps. Canadian banks all use what is called the interac network, it's a real time interbanking network operated by a non-profit intermediary company funded by the banks, also has it's own consumer phone support etc etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interac

Oh I see, yes I was, ok that's a lot better. Indeed there are plenty of (fee-taking) third-party solutions for that in other countries. Monzo (if not other banks) offer something similar, push vs. pull if you like (you go to my URL and pay by card to 'transfer') in the UK.

So you enter an email address/phone number for them, and they receive a (presumably one time use, pre-set amount) link to retrieve money from you. That seems good. Ceteris paribus though (i.e. if both broadly implemented) I think I'd rather the recipient have the link where you go to pay, seems a bit odd to shift the onus on to the person you owe money to action it.

Curious what you mean where you go to pay? You mean in addition to peer to peer (me sending $50 to my buddy for dinner) I should be able to checkout with the link IRL also? I'm a little confused (although that's an interesting idea). FWIW, 99% of people I know have auto-deposit on, I'm not sure how it works because I don't have it on, but I presume it means if the email matches the email/phn with your bank, it automatically deposits, so most people I Etransfer don't even ask me to put a password on (if you do I guess auto deposit doesn't work or something).

I mean that rather than (my understanding - correct if wrong) the way this works of: A generates link to pay someone $x, A (or A's bank) sends B ('s email address/phone number) the link, B visits link and takes the payment; that I would have it be: A visits B's link, A pays by card or transfer if linked to bank account.

Oh I see, yeah it's bidirectional, either party can initiate. It's a pretty good system tbh, and amazing we've had it for so many years!!

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