here in Australia nobody ever seems to have cash anymore, and it doesn't seem to be an issue. Tap your phone to pay, done.
Having lived in the UK for a while I noticed how bank transfers there seemed to be instant regardless of the amount (just my experience, never did anything over a few thousand).
But I was stuck in the position of either asking for way to much cash that I would be comfortable having to then take into the bank (and probably hard to find a bank that even had that much to withdraw in the first place) or accept a bank cheque which while most people say it’s “as good as cash” I noticed certain banks like NAB have a disclaimer that they can cancel them if they are reported lost or stolen.
I ended up accepting the bank cheque on Friday afternoon, couldn’t deposit it till Monday and then had 3 nervous days of waiting for it to clear.
While PayID and Osko seem to be taking us in the right direction, the limits are still too restrictive for large in person transactions like this.
I sold a car through gumtree here in Aus a few years ago, the buyer sent a bank transfer, I received it, went about my day. Seems very similar to the UK (where I have spent most of my life and still have accounts/make transfers).
Of course you could ask the buyer to transfer the money and wait for it to clear before handing over the keys, but that just moves the uncomfortable and stressful situation to the other party (I wouldn’t want to transfer someone money and then have to wait a few days for it to clear before they handed me the keys) and doesn’t actually solve the underlying issue.
Giving the account owners enough time to contact the bank if the payment is unauthorised, but when the waiting period is up you can then choose to release the funds at a time that suits you (eg. for a car sale, when you hand over the keys) or you can choose to can the transaction returning the funds to your account.
Wishful thinking I know, given how much of a mess the instant payment system is at the moment. I had an account that supported PayID with Macquarie and tried to transfer money to another PayID account with Up bank and found that because one of the banks (Macquarie iirc) didn’t support whatever underlying payment system Up used (Osko possibly) I wasn’t able to use PayID and had to use regular EFT instead.
The technical limit for the system is GBP 1,000,000, and the lower limit is up to the bank to determine.
If I were selling a car in the UK, I'd ask for a bank transfer (e.g. laptop/mobile) and wait for it to confirm. If I wished to be especially careful, I'd meet the other person at their bank, and provide the cashier my bank details.
I personally love the convenience, but admittedly I'm not the demographic that this article is talking about.