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Comment by immibis | Hacker News Reader

I often make medium-to-large purchases using SEPA bank transfer. The merchant gives me a bank account number, a random or serialized reference code, and a week to make payment. I go to my bank, and send the money to the bank account, inputting the same reference code. Once it arrives (usually within the day or the next morning) the thing is paid. This works for most online purchases that are not urgent and support the payment type.

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That’s fair, but paying by credit card lets you:

- Keep the money in the bank (and earn interest on it) for another month or so

- Contest fraudulent charges or payments for goods or services that are never delivered

- Earn travel rewards (I know, those have systemic downsides)

- Pay any business in essentially any country in any currency with no fee for you and a low fee for the business

SEPA has no fees and doesn’t care about currencies either. It’s EU only however.

You're wrong on all accounts here:

1. Banks are also allowed to charge fees for SEPA transfers, with some limitations.

2. It does care about currencies, in that it only supports one: the E stands for Euro, and all SEPA transfers, in the four rails it provides, are in Euros, including transfers from and to countries that are not in the euro zone.

3. And SEPA isn't limited to the European Union, as it has 36 states participating in the scheme, more than the EU's 27.

I don't know from where you are, but in my country this is considered generally a bad or not safe idea. When you send money directly to someone, if they are fraudsters, it is very hard to get that money back. On the other hand, it's generally easier when you paid with your debit card. And even easier and safer if it was a credit card.

The victim is identifiable by their bank and therefore traceable by the law enforcement agencies. If they're fraudulent, men with uniforms and guns come to their house and put them in jail. It's a clever system, really.

I meant to say the recipient, obviously.

The things that are still missing to make this perfect:

- SEPA instant transfers (exist, but cost extra)

- A consistent (across all banks) API to poll for received payments for the merchant

- A consistent API (e.g. an URL schema that browsers do support) to quickly fill in payment details with your bank's transfer form.

Dutch iDeal will be rolled out continent wide pretty soon ( soon in bank time ), which is what you want.

Last time I checked instant sepa (which was today) it was free as in zero commissions on either side and was actually instant.

Depends on the bank. In Germany, N26's free account charges 0.49€ per instant SEPA transfer, and sometimes it's unavailable because the other bank (e.g. one used by many German doctors) only supports non-instant SEPA.

But yes, instant SEPA is often free and often available and very nice when both of those are true.

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