Comment by stephenhuey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stephenhuey | Hacker News Reader

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I see other comments here saying it's intended to be digital cash, but as a programmer it makes no sense that we Zelle users cannot find out the identify and ultimate destination on the other side of the funds transfer - it's also annoying that the USA doesn't have a simple bank transfer system like many other countries do.

About 4 years ago, I got scammed when I sent a payment to a local preschool and later found out the preschool did not receive those funds. Someone was illicitly reading their emails and and also had control of a discarded email address the school no longer used and routed my Zelle payment to the bank account associated with that. The school suspected a former employee, but nothing ever came of it even though there was a police report and I also filed a complaint with the feds. A police officer called me several months later to say the case had ended up in his lap but he didn't see a way to do anything about it. Chase had multiple meetings with me, and they even knew which bank the funds had been transferred to, so it made no sense to me that there was nothing that could be done to retrieve the funds. Eventually the whole saga just ended with no resolution, and I figured if that person was so desperate they probably needed the money more than me.

Anyone have more insight into the underlying mechanics and why we can't confirm recipient identity/account as a Zelle user?

I don't think that one can't add security and verification, etc. I think the issue is those things are not free and it is supposed that adding them would just transform Zelle into something more akin to a credit card, which we already have.

In your example it seems you did actually send it to the school. The problem was an additional party also had access to school accounts, even if old. To me that's equivalent to a former employee having an illicit copy of keys to the till and stealing cash from it in the off hours. Police would probably treat that crime similarly.

At the end of the day the police have to prioritize their resources too. Technically they could "do" things. But is it worth the cost? When it comes to petty crimes it seems mostly the answer is no, and I have to agree. Even when I had my own phone pick pocketed. It sucks but life goes on.

I agree with you. It was just fascinating to me how in hindsight I couldn't access the full digital trail of those funds and other people wouldn't just reveal it to me on account of privacy. As other people have pointed out, the courts would be needed, because even though I showed them evidence with some screenshots, etc, I suppose I could have fabricated those to cause trouble for someone.

The cops don't care enough to do the paperwork and get the subpoenas. Next time suggest that the ex school employee is a terrorist. The KYC compliance and financial crime divisions won't get activated if you don't push the issue. Your average city cop just doesn't give enough of a damn. The paper trail and financial surveillance systems are there, you just have to make them pursue it.

You'd need to go through the legal process ie: get a court to issue a subpoena to Chase to get to the other bank, then to the other bank to get the customer info, then you sue the other customer.

I'm not sure if it would be you or the officer.

The banking system is supposed to know who everyone is, which is the point of the KYC regulations. Extracting that information out of them is work.

Yeah, the ostensible reason is to be 'digital cash', but the more accurate reason is that it was created by the banks to shift the liability nexus to customers.

> ... it's also annoying that the USA doesn't have a simple bank transfer system like many other countries do.

FedNow is here and live.

For a couple of initial test institutions in limited cases.

It's coming, but it's not really "here and live" fully yet.

Not everywhere I guess but US Bank, Wells and JPMC have it [1]. Whole bunch more have RTP too. [2]

[1] https://www.frbservices.org/news/press-releases/072023-fedno...

[2] https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp

Lots of other countries offer direct to consumer rails. I think fednow is an absolute improvement over ACH but it’s still way behind some of the peer payment systems out there.

FedNow is live, but not quite "here" since I can't personally send money to my neighbor with it yet. I'll be interested to see how the implementation looks to an end user such as myself, and how I can verify the identity/destination of the recipient. A little over a month ago, the Los Angeles Times said JPMorgan Chase would offer it soon. The JPMC website has a page about how people can implement it through their platform. However, when I log into my Chase account and search for fednow, this is what I get:

You asked: "fednow"

We're sorry but we need more details to give you a complete and accurate answer. Can you please rephrase your question?

https://www.jpmorgan.com/payments/solutions/fednow

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-07-29/heres-now-...

https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow

FedNow is not a service for end users. It's a service for banks.

My banks Zelle integration tells me the name of the other account and will specifically alert me if my Zelle "contact" name is different than the actual name on the account.

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