Dwolla Gets Into Government With Iowa Tax-Paying Plan

> can someone drain your account if they get your IBAN?

No. They are often printed on invoices and the websites of organisations you might want to send money.

I'm pretty sure someone can only put money into your account.

In general you go into your bank or banking website, give them the IBAN number you want to transfer to and then do the transfer.

For personal accounts + transfers under about £10k it's in about an hour in the UK.

No. IBAN is one way only - you can only receive money.

The IBAN is just country, bankid, account id + checksum all in one. There in no off by one possible or misplaced digit or two.

When you need to send moneyyou need to just give the iban+name of the receiver. It clears in 24 hours and transfer fee are less than 1EURO.

Yes - with your account number someone could theoretically drain your account using direct debit. In practice that never happens (and most people don't keep their account number a secret). In addition, even if it would happen you have more than plenty of time to reverse the transaction at your bank (which shouldn't involve any discussion or so with the bank).

As for transactions themselves, unlike in the US where you can conduct ACH transactions in both directions (i.e., debiting another account) IBAN transactions are "sending only" (like email). And you typically also don't need to whitelist/add another account first (as in the case of ACH transactions), but just type the senders account number into the recipient field (again, like email).

In Europe I never used any third party services, as IBAN transactions are usually free and the easiest thing to do. In the US it's usually easier to use something like Dwolla (or even checks!) if you want to send money to someone.

Yes my sense was "SB is the onramp to payments acceptance by newer methods. But we have Iowa!"