Commission proposes to accelerate the rollout of instant payments in euro
ec.europa.eu
ec.europa.eu
The only thing missing is forcing banks to provide an API for third party integrations, but I think there is a separate proposal on the way for that.
Imagine being able to accept instant payments from everyone in the EU, without having to sign up for a service like Stripe or Paypal, just using a normal bank account from any of hundreds (thousands?) of banks in the EU. And your customers don't even need a credit card, just the banking app they already use every day.
Europeans? They’ll figure out a way to require chipTAN and SMS confirmation for POS transactions.
The US "instant payments" is Venmo/PayPal which are secondary to the banks not primary.
[1] https://fps.hkicl.com.hk/eng/fps/index.php [2] https://www.hsbc.com.hk/campaigns/fps/
This is about making all that work with Euro accounts from different countries.
Made some stupid comment online while being drunk? We take your ability to by transportation passes/plane tickets...
IIRC this is already happening in China.
Not in china though:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/1/18246297/china-transportat...
Allegedly there are the 'green' trains, because using older green wagons.
They aren't high-speed, but drive everywhere. As do busses. Which allegedly you can use. Just takes longer.
More scary IMO because the US / Europe will never be China, but it's easy to see some president in the US logic their way into the same position as Canada, and use the same state apparatuses to banish dissenters.
Oh, you made an inapropriate comment on twitter... no more concerts and movie tickets for you.
As said by someone else below, china has a similar system in place, where chinese people with low social scores cannot buy public transportation tickets.
And I also don't think the government needs to know you went to a buttplug store and bought an XXXL buttplug there. (especially if you're a guy, unmarried, and the government is anti lgbt oriented).
In the area where this instant payment system will go up, health insurance is universal and government regulated as well :)
Your health insurance might not go up, but you could find procedures being denied if, based on your purchases and behavior, the cost would be a poor investment for society and the state.
If you get denied of a procedures because of previous purchases and behaviour that the government insurance does not want to cover; the private sector will be happy to serve you.
Except the Eu is slowly privatizing its healthcare with the pressure from the US.
I mean, you’re exaggerating. But yes, I’d like obese people to pay more for insurance. Also, if government thinks booze is bad it shouldn’t sell it.
> As said by someone else below, china has a similar system in place
Anecdotally, I asked about this a Chinese friend I studied with in Europe. She said “Social credit? What’s that?” It’s not that she can’t read, she’s on Instagram and WhatsApp.
The question for you is whether the government has a need or the right to know every penny (or whatever fractional currency you can legally use) that you move around. This shouldn’t be confused with the government having a need to know about incomes and/or wealth for taxation purposes. Sales or consumption taxes collected by sellers don’t typically care who exactly pays it or what the mode of payment is.
Trusting a nebulous entity like a government to track every expense and every money transfer would be draconian, and would be understandable only in dictatorships and authoritarian regimes (and the ones very close to becoming one).
First, there is nothing like the government in Europe.
Secondly, the organisms that are tracking as extensively as possible European citizen are mostly private firms (whose parent companies are typically not European). European directives like GPDR are on the contrary rather shielding European citizen privacy if anything.
I doubt this proposition is forcing to withdraw cash within euro zone. Citizen are free to continue to use cash or not at there discretion.
technically no... but in practice, yes.
EU decides something, and local governments must implement the EU-wide changes into local laws.
If EU decides to do something, they do it... the states are not as sovereign as it might seem.
I mean... look at EU banning RT (dot com) - https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2022...
EU decided to identify payers of bills (or bank transfers) above 1000eur, and every country had to pass the law ( https://www.eumonitor.eu/9353000/1/j4nvk6yhcbpeywk_j9vvik7m1... )
So yeah... EU is "the government", there's just one step in between.
The thing is, "EU decides" hides all the complexity of the reality. First of all, "Europe Union" can refer to many things. Here, most likely the sentence refers to the European Parliament. European Commission, European Council, euro area are three other distinct notions for example that can be easily confused with EU.
>the states are not as sovereign as it might seem.
They prioritize their sovereign decision power on staying unified above local punctual interests… or not, as the Brexit showed. States, so far, remain sovereign, even if they accept to bow before collegial decisions in which they themselves participate.
European Council is the institution that is generally presented as "the government".
There is no reason to allow them to know more, but there are very good reasons to let them only know what they really need to know.
I don't see why transactions that use cash today, wont use cash tomorrow
2. Why do you believe that an instant payment system requires us to "give out our bank details to every stranger we meet at the market" when numerous countries have already implemented such systems that don't require that?
At least in the case of Germany, this is factually incorrect: We do have Lastschrift, which is eerily similar to "drawing money from an account". Sure, we can get that money back during a six week period IF the receiver still has it, but it is a hassle.
What? I thought the main problem was how easy it is to do identity theft in the US. You mean I can steal someone's money with just their account number ?!?
2. I was replying to a message, and in that message the user gave the example that at a farmers market someone could pay using a bank transfer. If I'm a farmer at that market I'm going to have to give my bank account details to all the strangers who want to buy a few apples from me, so they can instantly transfer money to my account.
You shouldn't give out usernames and passwords. Your bank account number is not a secret.
> I'm going to have to give my bank account details to all the strangers who want to buy a few apples from me
I don't know what it's like in Ireland, but literally every business in Austria prints their bank account number on the invoice so you can pay it. Bank account numbers are not secret. There's not much people can do with a bank account number apart from send money to it.
It's pretty much the same in Ireland, I've no idea what the other commenter thinks can be accomplished with an IBAN.
Seen as you are also Irish you will appreciate this example: https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/consumer/common_consum...
Under the header 'Protect your money', the first bullet point is never use bank tranfers.
The first bullet point is
"Never send money by bank transfer unless you are absolutely certain you are sending it to someone you know and trust. Sending money by bank transfer is like sending someone cash and generally, once you send it, it’s gone"
which is about paying by bank transfers, and very different from "never hand out your bank account to receive payments", which pretty much every business (that do not want the keep their proceeds off the record) does by default in many (most?) European countries.
Sure, if some stranger on the street asked for my bank account (or my name for that matter) out of the blue, I wouldn't do so. But for Craigslist type in-person sales, people here have no problem giving their bank account to receive payments. The typical fraud is here is asking for payments of to be delivered goods and subsequently not sending the promised goods, which is what I understand your link is also warning about. Because European bank payments are mostly push-type, that are largely irreversible. For direct in-person sales (such as farmers on a market), that's not an issue.
Someone could transfer money to you and write "thanks for the plutonium" into the reference field.
2. I still don't know why you think it's a problem for a farmer at a market to share their bank account number for people to pay them. Pretty much any business bank account number here is public information. But even if for some reason you think that it's hugely problematic, it's technically pretty simple to setup an instant payment system that don't require making any account number public.
The GENERAL (I will super emphasize this word this time - G.E.N.E.R.A.L) advice from financial institutions for a very long time has been that scammers want your personal information, so to stay safe you should not give bank info to strangers. They also reccommend avoiding bank transfers, money grams and other such things and only using secure card payments.
Again, this is GENERAL advice, if someone wants someone else to send them money they can of course give them their account number and get the money transfered, I never said there was anything wrong with bank transfers, just that the GENERAL advice is to avoid them, they are often associated with scammers.
There was a prank call show on tv about 10 years ago called fonejacker (UK tv) and one of the characters used to ring people up and ask for their bank account details (example sketch here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA3zhzT1wDo ) and funnily enough, no one that I recall ever gave them out.
If 2 people want to make a transaction via bank transfer they can, but the GENERAL advice has always been to avoid them and don't be handing out bank details to strangers. Obviously, "dont give bank details to strangers" is not an exact quote from a financial institution, it is just the GENERAL theme of the overall advice to avoid being scammed.
You'll find as well that most of your banking apps allow you to save the IBAN of various contacts. I have the IBANs of a few friends and family members saved to my phone that way, and the only thing I can do with that information is send them money.
This is just the EU commission pushing for this game that they themselves started to end.
Banks had a chance to introduce this ten years ago - but back then, they were greedy and wanted to keep money in limbo, most likely to have an advantage in taking interest. By now, the market has other, more internationally accepted modes of payment.
Hundreds of millions of citizens gain access to instant payments through SEPA. It’s already compatible with the existing banking system Europeans are already used to, i.e. share an IBAN with someone and share money. Which other cheap instant payment methods are there that are available to so many people?
and that's a usability disaster. the entire experience is atrocious, you have to enter and secure multiple pieces of numeric data.
it's a system begging to be disrupted.
My regular taco place here only accepts cash or bank transfers, no cards.
I believe they have to provide this API to comply with the PSD2 directive. Namely, they have to open the bank to TPPs (Third Party Payment Service Providers)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blik
Instant payments
Money transfers over phone number
2 minutes payment codes that you type on e.g website and accept payment in app
Shopping example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBw1qa07gGU
Dutch banks have supported instant payments for a couple of years now, and the way person to person payments are most often done is through something called a "Tikkie" which involves sending someone a payment URL (via any messaging platform or a QR code) which then opens their own banking app on their phone.
And many have somewhat adept ways to convenient setup bank transfer between two people (e.g. through an qr code), standardizing this would be a much bigger improvement then just standardizing the first part.
Which seems incorrect as 10 second payments EU-wide obviously require universal adoption of updated IT systems and more stringent control to guarantee that 10 second deadline.
The increased costs will inevitably have to be paid for somehow, likely via incereased fees.
Eg. my bank charges 7€ for an instant transfer, slow transfers are free. This proposal would make all transfers free and instant.
They are just trying to make a quick profit.
Just like card payment processing fees, this is a case where banks are overcharging for a service, and the EU will fix the situation.
The situation is comparable to mobiles in a decade - it's a profit center for banks, the systems are there but they make more money by getting in the way. So the EU need to step in and regulate this market failure.
Plenty of other governments have done that essentially by threat or mandate though? UK has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments and Thailand has https://www.bangkokbank.com/en/Personal/Digital-Banking/Prom... -- I don't remember my fees going up in either country
Every country, or union of countries, should be in full control over its payment services and infrastructure.
UPI is a gamechanger.
Like how?
Mandatory implementation of accepting SEPA instant directive to banks was like 2-3 years ago. Afaik there was no instant payment within most of the major economies, case Germany. Banking outside UK in europe is still a pain for business and consumer.
EU commission would want consistency, but nothing was stopping Bundesbank from innovating.
This map is my pet peeve. Because after you've entered your PLZ/Zip or address, it doesn't even show all ATMs. You have to 'wiggle' the map a little, then others pop up. And depending on how you zoom in, they disappear again. Have to 're-wiggle' carefully. If you pan far, it takes time for the ATMs in that area to pop up, if at all. Again, 'wiggling' is needed.
And it still doesn't show one who I pass by often, know it's in operation, but is useless anyways, because: Dieser Service ist derzeit nicht verfügbar.
ARRGH! Trashgroup!
Edit: On FF with uBo off btw., just to be sure.
Edit: Can't get over it. There is one Bank next to my now closed Bank which had an ATM, which now has a sign to use the next one from Postbank, which doesn't even show up on their map, and which gives you the No Service message regardless.
It makes a great impression right from the start with the comically squashed map of Germany: the aspect ratio depends on the window size.
Thank you very much for your report. It’s good to know that these are not isolated incidents.
I recently visited Poland and their banking/payment system is amazing (especially Blik). Anything that moves is France ahead will be great.
I do not even touch the question of the login screens that are atrocious. Boursorama (largest online bank) had me chose exactly 8 digits PIN to log in. Fortuneo broke their logging screen.
None of them care the slightest.
Instant payments have the advantage that they better integrate into online shopping. You could have used signed receipts for the wire transfer by the bank instead though.
No need to give out bank details. Just give someone your e-mail or phone number and they can send you money via their bank app. They don't even need to know which bank you use.
I want to send money or request money from someone?
1. Ask for their info (e-mail or phone number)
2. Login to my banking service (web or app)
3. Create a new contact with 1.
4. If they did not setup auto-deposit: setup a security question
5. Send/Request money (+ security question, if needed)
6. Wait few seconds~minutes for an email/SMS
7. If you did not setup auto-deposit: Click on link provided to open 2.
But perhaps we have a different level of tolerance. For me, it's convenient.
ps. Don't get me started about figuring out how to send automated payments and if you're lucky enough to find a bank that has a broken API to this.
> with an obligation on providers to verify the match between the bank account number (IBAN) and the name of the beneficiary provided by the payer
This will break a lot of payment flows, currently that verification is rarely enforced. For example I have saved "power company" as receiver's name, the transfers still work since everything besides IBAN is ignored.
Right now the receiving bank can silently start being compliant overnight and you won't know. If there's some official deadline, this gives the opportunity to warn all parties beforehand.
EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG
Yes, EnBW, the shorthand for the name, is PART of the official name, yes, that is an Umlaut, and yes, the name is too long to fit into the standard account holder field of a SEPA transfer. So I send my electricity money to the "EnBW AG", which always worked, but is technically wrong (and technically, there is no obvious "real" solution, because their letterhead and their prefilled paper slips all use the full name, which - again - uses a too long, incorrectly-alphabeticized variant.
Now, for some extra fun, what about legal forms that have a & (illegal character) in it? Kombine GmbH & Co. KG cannot be addressed, but is a valid name.
And how do you teach an 80 year old grandmother - who up to now keeps filling out paper forms - to do this correctly on a screen the sized half a postcard wide?
You need to enter the account holder name and select personal or business (with laxer rules for the latter, I assume). The API returns perfect match or partial match (actual holder name) and allows you to proceed, or no match.
A paper form means there's a human who enters the data at some point, no?
No fucking way I’m gonna leave some random with both the car and my 200k. So instead of sending a bank transfer, I still have to show up with a big bag of cash in 2022.
The amounts where multi-hour transaction times are consistently acceptable will be significantly higher, 200k is still well within normal everyday p2p transactions.
You should probably get out of your bubble.
That said, it's a false dichotomy. You can perfectly allow sky-high limits to SCT Inst for customers who regularly need it, yet have more reasonable policies for the 99% of the population who's perfectly OK with a slow transfer when they wire money to a notary public to buy a property.
This leaves the seller with both your money and your car.
It's mostly useless I think because when you close on a house your notary is doing an escrow service, and I paid my house by bank transfert to my own notary (couldn't do it online, and their weird bank doesn't support receiving instant transferts).
The current way banks process non-instant SEPA transfers is very predictable and not a problem in some scenarios. SEPA is huge and breaking the old scheme to force everyone to move to SCT inst doesn't seem realistic anyway.
Similarly, the UK hasn't stopped using BACS even though the availability of Faster Payments is ubiquitous today.
Instant payments in euro? It's called cash you fucking authoritarians! It is never "locked in transit in the financial system" and can be instantly "consumed" and "invested" by the receiving party.
> while preserving the effectiveness of screening of persons that are subject to EU sanctions, through a procedure whereby payment service providers will verify at least daily their clients against EU sanctions lists
> in full conformity with existing rules on sanctions and fighting financial crime
The real reason: to have government approve every transaction. Sure they mean russians now but it will expand. We've seen the massive overreach of government force the past 2 years to keep people confined in their homes. Too critical of government? Sanctioned. Bought too many calories? Sanctioned. Bought too many joules of energy? Sanctioned.