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Comment by kome | Hacker News Reader

ahahah!

so true. those names are silly. also, French and Spanish can already send money for free via IBAN / SEPA

Wero and Bizum mostly just associate phone numbers to IBANs and perform instant SEPA transfers underneath. The benefit is that you only need the other's phone number to send them money, usually already in your contact list, instead of them sharing you a twenty-something digit number.

Reminds me of PingIt.

https://www.retailbankerinternational.com/comment/barclays-r...

That's not the point at all. Currently I'm using paypal to send money to friends when we split dinner or share other costs. I'd like to use a similar European service instead and not go through a ceremony to open my banking app, initiate transfer, write the recipient's IBAN, confirm and wait a day for the transfer to take place.

You shouldn't need to wait for a day, instant transfers have been a thing for a while now. Unless you're in terribly bad luck to be stuck with one of the few banks that are lagging behind.

International money transfers, even between currencies, now take seconds whenever I do them.

The "map phone number to bank account" services do make this whole thing a lot easier, but on the other hand I kind of don't want to help scammers by giving them the option to look up what bank they need to pretend to be before dialing a number.

I split bills via Revolut?

I could do it via IBAN and it would mostly (not to all banks) instant.

My bank also allows payments via a phone number now. Tested once and it works, but everyone's used to Revolut for bill splitting here in Romania.

Entering an IBAN once in a blue moon is a cheap price to pay to not be the US's bitch imho

> write the recipient's IBAN,

You can do it once, and save in in your bank app.

> wait a day for the transfer to take place.

Isn't instant SEPA required to be supported by all banks now?

> You can do it once, and save in in your bank app.

I try not to send or write my IBAN just anywhere. With things like Direct Debit, I treat it with care. Sharp contrast with Paypal, where you can use your email address or even have a paypal.me page that does not expose your email at all.

> Isn't instant SEPA required to be supported by all banks now?

Yes, and yet I think it's not supported by all banks. Especially those that are not in the Euro area. One more thing - many people including me are to this day not informed or aware if instant payments are charged by banks or not. I honestly don't know.

Good point about Direct Debit, thank you.

Ah yes, Pierre will surely have no issues paying for his baguette et croissant by filling in the boulangerie's IBAN on his mobile phone and waiting 15 minutes for them to check receipt.

We have instant bank transfers in Europe. And you can scan a QR code for payment via IBAN.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPC_QR_code

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