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Comment by oneplane | Hacker News Reader

Look like the US version of SEPA transfers (technology-wise) like (somewhat) described at https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-payme... but instead of just SWIFT (which is what is also ISO 20022 supported) its more for internal transfers as well.

I do wonder why the 12-year lag in the US implementation of essentially the same standards (and the same ones they had implemented on SWIFT much earlier) was there to begin with. You'd think that with the states in the US not being nation-states it would be much easier/faster to implement something like this nation-wide.

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The US banking system is notably decentralized/fragmented, with a fat tail of regional banks. That extends to regulation, where banks are chartered at both the federal and state levels (both of which jealously guard their authority). Large banks started to offer a direct-transfer service called Zelle[1] a few years ago, but making it "standard" is a slog thanks to all of those regional banks. Instead, most people use third-party apps that operate over ACH.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelle_(payment_service)

I just want to clarify that Zelle was basically a 2017 rebranding of clearXchange, which existed since way back in 2011. Both Zelle and clearXchange were mostly marketing failures. The basic use-case of nearly-instant person-to-person transfers has been constant and functional throughout its existence.

And you're 100% correct that uptake in the long tail of smaller banks and credit unions is probably one of the biggest "issues" with the service. If your bank isn't signed up, there's nothing you can do as an individual except move to a bank that is. Systems like CashApp and Venmo don't have that issue.

Thanks for that clarification. I had only used regional banks or credit unions before a few years ago (when I learned about bank account bonuses), so it was a new-to-me product when they started to market Zelle.

No worries. It also didn't help that, if I recall correctly, clearXchange was also marketed by the different banks under their own pet names for the service. So there wasn't even a single name for it.

Let others work out the defects and shortcomings while learning from their mistakes to develop best practices for your own implementation. In this particular situation, there is no "first mover" advantage.

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