Thousands ofAmericans got caught in fintech and lost access to bank accounts
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Evolve, the bank that actually stores the money, says "Synapse’s abrupt shutdown of essential systems without notice and failure to provide necessary records needlessly jeopardized end users by hindering our ability to verify transactions, confirm end user balances, and comply with applicable law.".[2]
So much for "money as a service".
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2020/04/01/broken-s...
[2] https://www.getevolved.com/about/evolve-responds-to-fridays-...
Here and unblock the EU payment systems are themselves regulated , distinctly from banks but along very similar lines. A big motivation for this was to avoid such failures.
I wonder if having fdic.gov basically say "beware of fintechs" is going to negatively impact the sector: https://www.fdic.gov/resources/consumers/consumer-news/2024-...
Remember when Voyager said it was FDIC insured?
We don't need to gamify finance. Just make it fast, easy and safe to transfer money between parties, please.
I believe the US is the last of the largest economies to deploy something like FedNow. (The UK uses the EU one, doesn't it?) I imagine the credit card processors have put a huge fight.
Many banks are putting in receive-only FedNow - money can come in that way, but not go out. The U.S. Treasury supports send-side FedNow, so they can send Social Security, Medicare, tax refunds, etc. to bank accounts enabled for it. So that takes care of many routine transactions.
Send-side FedNow at the consumer level has problems.
Credit card transactions are tied to something of value being transferred from the merchant to the buyer. That info is carried along with the money transaction. So claim-handling and error reversal work reasonably well. Like wire transfers, but unlike credit cards, PayPal, and ACH, FedNow is irrevocable. When you send money with FedWire, it's gone. Fraud control will be tough. There's no merchant transaction associated with the money transfer. There are plans to add that, so a company can send someone a bill and they can pay that bill with FedNow. But the ability to send your entire bank balance to anybody with a few clicks, with no recourse, worries banks.
[1] https://explore.fednow.org/resources/rfp-market-practices.pd...