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Comment by quartz | Hacker News Reader

Couldn't you just send a wire?

Yes, but that involves talking to someone and waiting on hold. If there’s no rush, doing 4x ACH is easier, if you don’t know it’ll get you flagged. All I’m saying is banks need to be more prescriptive about telling you “we’ll put a hold on your account if you move large sums without telling us” rather than giving you some fake limit that actually utilizing will raise red flags. This is a common failure mode

I presume the argument some middle management type makes is that exposing their security protocols makes it trivial for a fraudster to work around. Obviously this is a fallacy because any genuine fraudsters has the incentive to work this all out by trial and error, if the information isn't freely available to them on some dark corner of the internet.

Trial and error takes time. Potentially a great deal of time. A motivated fraudster will likely get caught and stopped several times along the way if they're attacking a particular bank.

It's worth bearing in mind that most financially motivated criminals are after easy marks. If you're too hard or expensive to hit, they'll find another target. If you're seeing like a bank, that's a victory and the protocols are doing their job by reducing fraud.

Those typically have huge fees.

$25 to move $50k in an atomic, irreversible way isn't a huge fee IMO. when you're dealing with that amount of money, the risk of it getting frozen or flagged for fraud is > $25. A lot of banks will let you send wires for free if you have a large enough balance.

Not int the context of these amounts.

$20-ish to move 200k safely is nothing. If you are doing it internationally, it's typically tiny compared to the FX cost.

I’d be happier keeping the $25 tyvm.

And risk getting your account frozen "for no reason", really smart.

Sure, write a personal check then and expect a lengthy hold. Or something else on the risk vs. PITA vs. cost framework.

Point is, wires are cheap for what they do. They aren't your only option, but all options have tradeoffs.

This is a debate between sending 4x ACHs over 4 days (presumably from the comfort of your own web browser) vs a wire (often requiring a visit or phone time).

right, and the trade off there is you may get flagged for structuring and locked out, right?

As I said, there is a range of cost/risk/PITA options available. This is niche enough I don't think it's particularly worrying the banks don't support it easier.

What structuring? Both are way over mandatory SAR thresholds.

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