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Comment by wslh | Hacker News Reader

I know Europe. Thank you. Never said that EU doesn't have consumer protection laws.

I will illustrate my central point using the SEPA system you mentioned and forgetting the USA prehistoric finance platforms.

SEPA was introduced in iterations in 2008, 2009, 2014, etc. The EU has the resource means to achieve this in a way that other countries (e.g. development or underdevelopment ones) couldn't do.

Argentina, a super corrupt, infinite loop bureaucracy , and relatively weak country has implemented direct bank to bank transfer without fees (only taxes!) in 2001. This shows my point clearly. This was implemented in less than two years. Indeed around 1 year because they took one to work in the law.

Comparing Argentina to the EU (in political terms) is, in general, completely unfair. I don't know you but I would be concerned as a taxpayer if I were living in the EU zone.

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It is indeed completely unfair as Argentina is a single country of 45M people while Europe has ~10x the population and consists of 27countries - the fact that international bank transfers took longer to implement than intranational ones in a single country is kind of irrelevant? Or are you saying that argentina implemented international bank transfers (... With whom?) In only one year?

Argentina implemented local bank to bank transfer without fees in less than one year. Not only saying that, I was a witness.

I don't know how population size is relevant in this context. Instagram has 2.4b users.

Please think that I am comparing a country light years from EU resources. I know SEPA includes many countries but even so the comparison is relevant.

Argentina is a single country. SEPA covers 27. How long do bank transfers from Argentina to, say... Colombia take? I honestly don't know, but I'm going to assume longer than they do between EU countries.

We can benchmark both and continue the discussion since we can engage in a apples vs organges discussion. This is where qualitative metrics are important. We are talking about 7 years of difference and Argentina is a complete stalled political system. One more thing, this was in the middle of the highest crisis since 2000. At least it shows that when politicians need to move forward it happens.

BTW, Argentina also had many local banks in different regions. The EU region is just ~1.5x larger than Argentina.

So.

Argentina: 1 country. 1 currency. 1 law applicable to the entire country.

SEPA: EU + Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom: 31 countries. 12 currencies (7 currencies in the EU alone [1]). 31 different laws (while EU countries must adhere to the overall EU laws, they are free to implement their own laws as they see fit within the general framework).

wslh: yes, yes, they are entirely comparable, after all Argentina also has regions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currencies_of_the_European_Uni... Turkish Lyra is used in Northern Cyprus which, while de jure part of Cyprus, is not in the EU.

Again, do you know Argentina? If Argentina could implement this in one year in 2001 I assume that EU could implement it faster almost a decade after.

Again, two people gave you clear reasons why. And yet you keep saying that apple and orange is the same fruit

The issue was getting all of the different banking systems into synchronization and forcing the banks to get there.

SEPA effectively got everyone to the level of some of the smaller EU countries that implemented similar systems by early 1990s. It wasn't easy, because some of those countries had population that still thought cheques are a good idea.

That's the point: it is slow politics, no technological challenges.

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