Hacker News Reader

Comment by wslh | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com