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Comment by MichaelZuo | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly, the claim that: "there is no reason why many citizens and businesses in the EU are not able to send and receive money immediately" is made on the record by the responsible official, Mairead McGuinness, Commissioner for financial services, financial stability and Capital Markets Union.

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.

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The tech for instant tranfers is already there, they just charge ridiculous amounts for it.

Eg. my bank charges 7€ for an instant transfer, slow transfers are free. This proposal would make all transfers free and instant.

One of my banks in Portugal charges €1,7 flat for any instant transfer also. It's infuriating to know that the tech is there but banks are just being banks.

It's impossible to make anything free. The likely outcome is the costs will be moved around so that its paid indirectly.

Banks already make enough money from interest on loans, they can afford the minor cost of an instant SEPA transfer. The €7 cost that the parent is charged is way too high, I only have to pay €0.5 for the same with my bank, with a cap of €2,000 on the amount of the transfer (above it can only be the slow transfer).

Yes, hopefully that will be the case when everyone uses it due to economies of scale. A few extra euro cents per transaction should only represent a small burden per account holder.

I hope so. I hope it won't be the case where it's enforced that people have the ability to send money instantly but the cost isn't capped.

I already pay a monthly fee for my bank account, and other banks manage to offer instant transfers for free. I really can't imagine that instant transfers cost my bank 7€ per transaction.

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.

Free transfers within some countries are usually instant. That needs to change into always instant and then cross border.

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.

My bank (Boursorama) does free instant transfers, so it’s definitely viable for banks.

Depends on the bank. My bank processes regular free bank transfers as instant if supported by the destination bank.

Many banks already provide such possibility within their ecosystem for free. Additionally the faster SEPA payments are already mostly available, but expensive. So all the bits are already there, what is missing is the will of the banks. The situation is similar to the phone roaming fees, where heavy regulatory action was needed to provide best value for customers.

> 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.

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

I think the parent's point is that it may be relatively simple to implement for national transfers, but it seems the EU is mandating it for international transfers too (namely, within the entire Euro-zone).

Most banks in the EU already have such payment systems, which is part why the EU moves things ahead I think.

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