Actual question: why don’t Americans just transfer money using a normal baning app? I just have to open the app of my bank. Enter the IBAN, name and amount, confirm and the money will be sent pretty fast. No need for either party to use any third party app.
We don’t have IBAN. Worse, we have routing and account numbers that CAN be used for an ACH transfer but many banks are disabling this functionality on personal accounts because people kept falling for scams.
And now you shouldn’t zelle someone unless you’ve met this person in real life and not online. And when you zelle you enter their phone number and then you get a one verification code sent to your phone number. They really like to complicate things. Where is the fucking cash anymore? I would rather slide someone a round $5 and expect no change than zelle someone $4.50 for the coffee.
Edit: the reason is because of scammers using people personal phone numbers and hacking their carriers (or sending via their phone line idk how they do it tbh) my mother got a text from a friend and bought them $500 in apple gift cards. I heard they now copy speech and can mimic your voice for calls so have a passphrase with your grandma so she doesn’t send you the $100 from her ss check
American banks use ACH, and requires both a routing number (a bank identifier) and the account number.
But theres a reason to prefer a transaction service over direct ACH. And that is settlement time. A service like zelle, the transaction is done in real time as in the money will appear in your account within an hour. But ACH does batch settlements, and that can take up to 3 days (though its ussually a day) before the money appears in your account.
Europe manages it instantly, or in rare cases that I’ve never seen in under 10 seconds. Honestly, three days is sad, its 2025, do they print it and put the boxes on a plane?
Used to be XML->FTP over SSL when things were running on iron. Healthcare worked that way too (still does in some cases but the iron has been changed out for *nix)
This is madness. Im Australian banking with CBA (a popular bank) and I can send 20k to my mum’s bank account at ANZ (another big bank) and she receives it in her account in 30 seconds or less.
We even have a thing called PayID which links your account deets to a mobile number or email address, and so if I go out to dinner with friends and we want to split the bill, I just tell them to PayID my mobile number and I get it within 30 seconds, no 3rd party FinTech required.
It makes total sense, actually. You just have to look at it from the view point of a corporation - which often helps to make sense of our bullshit.
Our banking system is so antiquated because we have a plethora of third party payment processors whose entire business model is providing those modern features - for a small fee. Part of their profits get redirected to bribing lobbying Congress members to make sure things stay the same.
There’s also the issue that every check you’ve sent has enough information on it to do an ACH. There’s no way to verify unless you’re in person at the bank.
Transaction services at the very least try to verify you’re who you are.
Its not hard to get a bank account that I’m aware of, but a lot of people have gotten caught up in FinTech. You can get a greendot paycard or have your direct deposits go to a CashApp account.
Most people don’t realize how vulnerable their money is with cash-app and the like. I didn’t either until I tried to add a new debit card to my cashapp account (because I do have a bank) and cashapp locked me out and closed the account while I had over $200 in it. I think its because my account was registered under a VoIP number, but I’ll never know because there’s no human customer service. I just had to take the L and move on.
I swear everything I learn about the US banking system just makes me wonder “how can this be legal?”, being able to just close an account with 200 real dollars and no recourse is just insane.
Haha, another frustration I have with the US financial system, is how seemingly easy it is to avoid legislation by renaming stuff.
It’s not a loan, your honor, it’s “buy now, pay later”. We just described what a loan is, and called it that, so we now expect complete immunity from any existing legislation, thank you very much. And now it seems to be “Earned Wage Access”, which is just uh… payday loans from an app.
I don’t know much about the specifics here, but it certainly sounds an awful lot like a way to store and move your money around. It’s not a banking app, it’s a cash app. Really just feels like your government is willing to play remarkably dumb in exchange for (I assume) lobbying money. A lot of stuff is more profitable with zero consumer protections.
is a giftcard a bank then somehow what about a stock brokerage account that allows storing USD? defining these as “not banks” makes tons of sense because amazon shouldn’t need to know my SSN for me to have a giftcard ballance with them where as banks do.
That’s great. Canada has very strong credit union adoption. The US is often more predatory. Banks can put people into minimum balance type accounts and fee you until the account runs dry. Not all, but some do. If you live in a rural area, you may not have many options. There’s a host of reasons. https://www.fdic.gov/household-survey
Actually getting the bank to recognise this can be a struggle, however. When my wife wanted one, some of them were insistent that they couldn’t give them to people from overseas. Only Nationwide would let her open one.
And in the cold dark of 2025, there might not even be any banks left near you. Most of them are shut or online only. The entire Peak District area has exactly one banking hub, and that’s run by the post office after the last bank closed last year.
I don’t understand the core concept of “have or add money in the app”?
Do you mean like adding money to some sort of pre-paid card in Apple Pay or Google Wallet? 'Cuz I can’t use either of those (GrapheneOS), and even if I could I’m pretty happy just using physical credit cards or cash anyways. Or are you talking about something else?
All these apps are basically a third party “digital wallet”, like PayPal. The market exists because US bank suck at quickly transferring money to eachother, and occasionally you want to give a friend money without having cash or waiting 3 business days.
I’m an American who doesn’t transfer through my banking account because I don’t trust or use banks. You can use our banking apps for that iirc via zelle which is built in to those but I don’t know anyone who likes it.
Actual question: why don’t Americans just transfer money using a normal baning app? I just have to open the app of my bank. Enter the IBAN, name and amount, confirm and the money will be sent pretty fast. No need for either party to use any third party app.
We don’t have IBAN. Worse, we have routing and account numbers that CAN be used for an ACH transfer but many banks are disabling this functionality on personal accounts because people kept falling for scams.
And now you shouldn’t zelle someone unless you’ve met this person in real life and not online. And when you zelle you enter their phone number and then you get a one verification code sent to your phone number. They really like to complicate things. Where is the fucking cash anymore? I would rather slide someone a round $5 and expect no change than zelle someone $4.50 for the coffee.
Edit: the reason is because of scammers using people personal phone numbers and hacking their carriers (or sending via their phone line idk how they do it tbh) my mother got a text from a friend and bought them $500 in apple gift cards. I heard they now copy speech and can mimic your voice for calls so have a passphrase with your grandma so she doesn’t send you the $100 from her ss check
American banks use ACH, and requires both a routing number (a bank identifier) and the account number.
But theres a reason to prefer a transaction service over direct ACH. And that is settlement time. A service like zelle, the transaction is done in real time as in the money will appear in your account within an hour. But ACH does batch settlements, and that can take up to 3 days (though its ussually a day) before the money appears in your account.
Europe manages it instantly, or in rare cases that I’ve never seen in under 10 seconds. Honestly, three days is sad, its 2025, do they print it and put the boxes on a plane?
They transfer nightly xml files over FTP. It’s a whole thing.
I legit can’t tell if that’s a joke or not
The only joke is this oligarchs-controlled country that intentionally keeps the system as broken as possible to sell the solution.
It’s a joke. They actually use FXP orchestrated by a third party, unencrypted.
It’s very efficient.
Used to be XML->FTP over SSL when things were running on iron. Healthcare worked that way too (still does in some cases but the iron has been changed out for *nix)
I would guess some manually processed queue or a batch processor that requires manual intervention to correct failures.
This is madness. Im Australian banking with CBA (a popular bank) and I can send 20k to my mum’s bank account at ANZ (another big bank) and she receives it in her account in 30 seconds or less.
We even have a thing called PayID which links your account deets to a mobile number or email address, and so if I go out to dinner with friends and we want to split the bill, I just tell them to PayID my mobile number and I get it within 30 seconds, no 3rd party FinTech required.
I’m European and I feel like this is the last puzzle piece to eliminate any need for third party payment services. I want this.
Wero is slowly being rolled out in Germany and France (and maybe elsewhere). But not all banks support it yet.
It makes total sense, actually. You just have to look at it from the view point of a corporation - which often helps to make sense of our bullshit.
Our banking system is so antiquated because we have a plethora of third party payment processors whose entire business model is providing those modern features - for a small fee. Part of their profits get redirected to
bribinglobbying Congress members to make sure things stay the same.See also our fucked up tax filing situation.
There’s also the issue that every check you’ve sent has enough information on it to do an ACH. There’s no way to verify unless you’re in person at the bank.
Transaction services at the very least try to verify you’re who you are.
Zelle is the official method of electronic transfer between different people (transfering to your own accounts doesn’t seem to involve zelle tho)
A surprising number of people don’t have a bank.
How do they have or add money in the app then? Sorry, in the UK banks have a legal obligation to provide basic accounts for anyone.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/basic-bank-accounts
https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homelessness/how_to_open_a_bank_account
Its not hard to get a bank account that I’m aware of, but a lot of people have gotten caught up in FinTech. You can get a greendot paycard or have your direct deposits go to a CashApp account.
Most people don’t realize how vulnerable their money is with cash-app and the like. I didn’t either until I tried to add a new debit card to my cashapp account (because I do have a bank) and cashapp locked me out and closed the account while I had over $200 in it. I think its because my account was registered under a VoIP number, but I’ll never know because there’s no human customer service. I just had to take the L and move on.
I swear everything I learn about the US banking system just makes me wonder “how can this be legal?”, being able to just close an account with 200 real dollars and no recourse is just insane.
that technically isn’t a bank, so the answer is banks can’t do that
Haha, another frustration I have with the US financial system, is how seemingly easy it is to avoid legislation by renaming stuff.
It’s not a loan, your honor, it’s “buy now, pay later”. We just described what a loan is, and called it that, so we now expect complete immunity from any existing legislation, thank you very much. And now it seems to be “Earned Wage Access”, which is just uh… payday loans from an app.
I don’t know much about the specifics here, but it certainly sounds an awful lot like a way to store and move your money around. It’s not a banking app, it’s a cash app. Really just feels like your government is willing to play remarkably dumb in exchange for (I assume) lobbying money. A lot of stuff is more profitable with zero consumer protections.
oh god yes.
Second mortgage with tax deductable interest?
No, no, that’s now a Home Equity line of credit. Same thing, but you don’t get a lump sum of money, and the interest is not deductible.
is a giftcard a bank then somehow what about a stock brokerage account that allows storing USD? defining these as “not banks” makes tons of sense because amazon shouldn’t need to know my SSN for me to have a giftcard ballance with them where as banks do.
That’s great. Canada has very strong credit union adoption. The US is often more predatory. Banks can put people into minimum balance type accounts and fee you until the account runs dry. Not all, but some do. If you live in a rural area, you may not have many options. There’s a host of reasons. https://www.fdic.gov/household-survey
Credit unions can be predatory, too. The US’s largest credit union, Navy Federal, has one of the highest rates of fees charged per customer, even compared to banks. https://www.nclc.org/resources/top-overdraft-fee-offenders-hitting-civilian-military-families/
Actually getting the bank to recognise this can be a struggle, however. When my wife wanted one, some of them were insistent that they couldn’t give them to people from overseas. Only Nationwide would let her open one.
And in the cold dark of 2025, there might not even be any banks left near you. Most of them are shut or online only. The entire Peak District area has exactly one banking hub, and that’s run by the post office after the last bank closed last year.
Cash exists?
What, just feed banknotes into your phone?
I don’t understand the core concept of “have or add money in the app”?
Do you mean like adding money to some sort of pre-paid card in Apple Pay or Google Wallet? 'Cuz I can’t use either of those (GrapheneOS), and even if I could I’m pretty happy just using physical credit cards or cash anyways. Or are you talking about something else?
All these apps are basically a third party “digital wallet”, like PayPal. The market exists because US bank suck at quickly transferring money to eachother, and occasionally you want to give a friend money without having cash or waiting 3 business days.
got it. yeah, I hate relying on paypal or venmo for this shit, but here we are
you don’t?
That’s not a thing here.
I’m an American who doesn’t transfer through my banking account because I don’t trust or use banks. You can use our banking apps for that iirc via zelle which is built in to those but I don’t know anyone who likes it.