> with an obligation on providers to verify the match between the bank account number (IBAN) and the name of the beneficiary provided by the payer
This will break a lot of payment flows, currently that verification is rarely enforced. For example I have saved "power company" as receiver's name, the transfers still work since everything besides IBAN is ignored.
Right now the receiving bank can silently start being compliant overnight and you won't know. If there's some official deadline, this gives the opportunity to warn all parties beforehand.
Yours may be an extreme example, but verification may be a hard to solve problem once account holder names become too long or have funky characters in it (as is often the case in the EU). For instance, my electricity provider is the
EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG
Yes, EnBW, the shorthand for the name, is PART of the official name, yes, that is an Umlaut, and yes, the name is too long to fit into the standard account holder field of a SEPA transfer. So I send my electricity money to the "EnBW AG", which always worked, but is technically wrong (and technically, there is no obvious "real" solution, because their letterhead and their prefilled paper slips all use the full name, which - again - uses a too long, incorrectly-alphabeticized variant.
Now, for some extra fun, what about legal forms that have a & (illegal character) in it? Kombine GmbH & Co. KG cannot be addressed, but is a valid name.
And how do you teach an 80 year old grandmother - who up to now keeps filling out paper forms - to do this correctly on a screen the sized half a postcard wide?
The UK came up with a practical solution to implement confirmation of payee.
You need to enter the account holder name and select personal or business (with laxer rules for the latter, I assume). The API returns perfect match or partial match (actual holder name) and allows you to proceed, or no match.
A paper form means there's a human who enters the data at some point, no?
Hm, given how many of these forms are sent around, I would expect most of them getting scanned and OCRd, with a fallback should checksums no longer match.
The way my banking app handles that is by displaying a warning: "You entered <foo> but this IBAN is associated with the name <bar>. Do you want to use that instead?"
I think that works pretty well.
Interestingly, the claim that: "there is no reason why many citizens and businesses in the EU are not able to send and receive money immediately" is made on the record by the responsible official, Mairead McGuinness, Commissioner for financial services, financial stability and Capital Markets Union.
Which seems incorrect as 10 second payments EU-wide obviously require universal adoption of updated IT systems and more stringent control to guarantee that 10 second deadline.
The increased costs will inevitably have to be paid for somehow, likely via incereased fees.
One of my banks in Portugal charges €1,7 flat for any instant transfer also. It's infuriating to know that the tech is there but banks are just being banks.
Banks already make enough money from interest on loans, they can afford the minor cost of an instant SEPA transfer. The €7 cost that the parent is charged is way too high, I only have to pay €0.5 for the same with my bank, with a cap of €2,000 on the amount of the transfer (above it can only be the slow transfer).
Yes, hopefully that will be the case when everyone uses it due to economies of scale. A few extra euro cents per transaction should only represent a small burden per account holder.
I already pay a monthly fee for my bank account, and other banks manage to offer instant transfers for free. I really can't imagine that instant transfers cost my bank 7€ per transaction.
They are just trying to make a quick profit.
Just like card payment processing fees, this is a case where banks are overcharging for a service, and the EU will fix the situation.
Free transfers within some countries are usually instant. That needs to change into always instant and then cross border.
The situation is comparable to mobiles in a decade - it's a profit center for banks, the systems are there but they make more money by getting in the way. So the EU need to step in and regulate this market failure.
Many banks already provide such possibility within their ecosystem for free. Additionally the faster SEPA payments are already mostly available, but expensive. So all the bits are already there, what is missing is the will of the banks. The situation is similar to the phone roaming fees, where heavy regulatory action was needed to provide best value for customers.
> Which seems incorrect as 10 second payments EU-wide obviously require universal adoption of updated IT systems and more stringent control to guarantee that 10 second deadline.
I think the parent's point is that it may be relatively simple to implement for national transfers, but it seems the EU is mandating it for international transfers too (namely, within the entire Euro-zone).
This will be huge. This will allow anyone to accept digital payments, eg. at a farmers market, using the bank accounts everyone already has.
The only thing missing is forcing banks to provide an API for third party integrations, but I think there is a separate proposal on the way for that.
Imagine being able to accept instant payments from everyone in the EU, without having to sign up for a service like Stripe or Paypal, just using a normal bank account from any of hundreds (thousands?) of banks in the EU. And your customers don't even need a credit card, just the banking app they already use every day.
Practically this is already the case in many countries; NL to my Revolut or PT accounts is seconds, vice versa too. It works well. But it is not guaranteed. Api would be good; I can imagine visa and mastercard are getting a little bit panicked as this is already trivial and I am using my phone for payments anyway (no idea where my card is) (but still use them of course via NFC).
NL here. We use Tikkie for similar needs as MobilePay. Although the ability of merchants to simply display a QR code for their customers to complete the transaction is a convenience I miss here.
Sure, there are countless of apps that can do instant transfers. The issue here is that sepa instant rollout has been taking way too long and this would force it to actually be required. It's a breeze having able to transfer money between banks any time of day in a few seconds.
Hong Kong's Faster Payment System (FPS) is like that. You can even use phone number or email instead of account number (or QR code). Very practical. Money moves instantaneously free of charge.
Exactly as parent mentioned - in China, if you mess with Party or they just deem you undesirable for whatever reason ie ethnicity, you can't purchase plane tickets, not even domestic ones. Heck, not even trains so you can't effectively travel within China. No mortgages/loans. Of course it will affect your hiring options badly. I believe it goes way deeper. China is already 1984 for a decade+
More scary IMO because the US / Europe will never be China, but it's easy to see some president in the US logic their way into the same position as Canada, and use the same state apparatuses to banish dissenters.
Oh, you bought booze and chocolates yesterday? You're getting fat and drunk, your health insurance just went up.
Oh, you made an inapropriate comment on twitter... no more concerts and movie tickets for you.
As said by someone else below, china has a similar system in place, where chinese people with low social scores cannot buy public transportation tickets.
And I also don't think the government needs to know you went to a buttplug store and bought an XXXL buttplug there. (especially if you're a guy, unmarried, and the government is anti lgbt oriented).
In this context, “universal and government regulated” also means “inescapable and absolute”.
Your health insurance might not go up, but you could find procedures being denied if, based on your purchases and behavior, the cost would be a poor investment for society and the state.
In most EU countries offering a Universal healthcare insurance, you have still a private market of insurances for services/products not covered by the government insurance (i.e. glasses, dental, cosmetics, etc.)
If you get denied of a procedures because of previous purchases and behaviour that the government insurance does not want to cover; the private sector will be happy to serve you.
> Oh, you bought booze and chocolates yesterday? You're getting fat and drunk, your health insurance just went up
I mean, you’re exaggerating. But yes, I’d like obese people to pay more for insurance. Also, if government thinks booze is bad it shouldn’t sell it.
> As said by someone else below, china has a similar system in place
Anecdotally, I asked about this a Chinese friend I studied with in Europe. She said “Social credit? What’s that?” It’s not that she can’t read, she’s on Instagram and WhatsApp.
Many people wouldn’t see an issue until they’re either personally affected or are the kind to look at privacy and freedoms deeply.
The question for you is whether the government has a need or the right to know every penny (or whatever fractional currency you can legally use) that you move around. This shouldn’t be confused with the government having a need to know about incomes and/or wealth for taxation purposes. Sales or consumption taxes collected by sellers don’t typically care who exactly pays it or what the mode of payment is.
Trusting a nebulous entity like a government to track every expense and every money transfer would be draconian, and would be understandable only in dictatorships and authoritarian regimes (and the ones very close to becoming one).
> The question for you is whether the government has a need or the right to know every penny (or whatever fractional currency you can legally use) that you move around.
First, there is nothing like the government in Europe.
Secondly, the organisms that are tracking as extensively as possible European citizen are mostly private firms (whose parent companies are typically not European). European directives like GPDR are on the contrary rather shielding European citizen privacy if anything.
I doubt this proposition is forcing to withdraw cash within euro zone. Citizen are free to continue to use cash or not at there discretion.
>EU decides something, and local governments must implement the EU-wide changes into local laws.
The thing is, "EU decides" hides all the complexity of the reality. First of all, "Europe Union" can refer to many things. Here, most likely the sentence refers to the European Parliament. European Commission, European Council, euro area are three other distinct notions for example that can be easily confused with EU.
>the states are not as sovereign as it might seem.
They prioritize their sovereign decision power on staying unified above local punctual interests… or not, as the Brexit showed. States, so far, remain sovereign, even if they accept to bow before collegial decisions in which they themselves participate.
European Council is the institution that is generally presented as "the government".
No, it is going from "being tracked by <website>, Stripe, their analytics partners, the bank, mastercard/visa, the NSA, [...]" to being tracked by the website and the banks. EU banks already have the infrastructure for instant payments, so this should be a non brainer
I don't see why transactions that use cash today, wont use cash tomorrow
Doubt it will be huge, we are constantly being told not to give out our bank details as scammers want them, now you think it'll be great if we just give out our bank details to every stranger we meet at the market. This will be great, for sending/receiving money but is hardly a replacement for card payments.
Indian UPI apps allow you to type phone number or find contact sender and receiver uses same app, or phonenum@bankname or user@bankname ids with equivalent QR codes or one time QR codes with amount. Money is routed to/from multiple bank accounts.
1. Europeans are not "constantly being told not to give out our bank details". That's an American thing, apparently due to a quirk that allows anyone with a US bank account number to draw money from that account. Euro banks certainly don't work that way. Having a Euro bank account number only allows people to transfer to, not from that account.
2. Why do you believe that an instant payment system requires us to "give out our bank details to every stranger we meet at the market" when numerous countries have already implemented such systems that don't require that?
In the UK you can set up a direct debit with just the bank account details (not quite the same as withdrawing money, but still enough to scam someone). The rest of your comment is quite correct though.
> Having a Euro bank account number only allows people to transfer to, not from that account.
At least in the case of Germany, this is factually incorrect: We do have Lastschrift, which is eerily similar to "drawing money from an account". Sure, we can get that money back during a six week period IF the receiver still has it, but it is a hassle.
Ok, I admit that I don't know the particulars of every Euro area bank system. But if you're referring to SEPA Direct Debit, only commercial clients can do that, after going through tons of hoops and paperwork. (In practice, all SEPA Direct Debits requests I've experienced in the last few years required me to first transfer a cent the them, to confirm that I'm actually in control of that account. )
> That's an American thing, apparently due to a quirk that allows anyone with a US bank account number to draw money from that account.
What? I thought the main problem was how easy it is to do identity theft in the US. You mean I can steal someone's money with just their account number ?!?
1. I am European (Irish) and I am constantly being told not to give out bank details. I don't mean people are always telling me that, but when ever there is information about being safe and avoiding scams they always say to not give out bank details, and that is info for EU people. There are many examples online.
2. I was replying to a message, and in that message the user gave the example that at a farmers market someone could pay using a bank transfer. If I'm a farmer at that market I'm going to have to give my bank account details to all the strangers who want to buy a few apples from me, so they can instantly transfer money to my account.
> I am constantly being told not to give out bank details
You shouldn't give out usernames and passwords. Your bank account number is not a secret.
> I'm going to have to give my bank account details to all the strangers who want to buy a few apples from me
I don't know what it's like in Ireland, but literally every business in Austria prints their bank account number on the invoice so you can pay it. Bank account numbers are not secret. There's not much people can do with a bank account number apart from send money to it.
> I don't know what it's like in Ireland, but literally every business in Austria prints their bank account number on the invoice so you can pay it. Bank account numbers are not secret. There's not much people can do with a bank account number apart from send money to it.
It's pretty much the same in Ireland, I've no idea what the other commenter thinks can be accomplished with an IBAN.
I was never talking about what can be accomplished with an IBAN. I was only saying that the idea of a world where everyone is going around buying things in the street with bank transfers is very unlikely as it contradicts the general advice given out about not using bank transfers and giving out bank details to strangers.
> Under the header 'Protect your money', the first bullet point is never use bank tranfers.
The first bullet point is
"Never send money by bank transfer unless you are absolutely certain you are sending it to someone you know and trust. Sending money by bank transfer is like sending someone cash and generally, once you send it, it’s gone"
which is about paying by bank transfers, and very different from "never hand out your bank account to receive payments", which pretty much every business (that do not want the keep their proceeds off the record) does by default in many (most?) European countries.
Sure, if some stranger on the street asked for my bank account (or my name for that matter) out of the blue, I wouldn't do so. But for Craigslist type in-person sales, people here have no problem giving their bank account to receive payments. The typical fraud is here is asking for payments of to be delivered goods and subsequently not sending the promised goods, which is what I understand your link is also warning about. Because European bank payments are mostly push-type, that are largely irreversible. For direct in-person sales (such as farmers on a market), that's not an issue.
Yes, the full bullet point is more specific, but the average joe/jane reading that is quite likely to takeaway 'Never send money by bank transfer'or maybe just simpler, 'bank transfers are dodgy'. That website is a very reputable source of information in Ireland so Irish people are going to follow it's advice. For decades a lot of information about staying safe online and avoiding scams has given the GENERAL advice to avoid bank transfers and never give out your bank details to strangers, this isn't something I've just made up today for the sake of this HN thread, it's the GENERAL advice given out by financial institutions for a long time. So a system where everyone is giving out their bank details and paying for everyday expenses with bank transfers seems pretty unlikely, even if those transfers are instant.
1. With bank details I mean name+act number. Of course we are also being told not to share login details etc. But here in the Netherlands tiny businesses and individuals do not hesitate giving you their account number if they expect payments from you. Giving your bank account was the defacto way to receive payments before moving to instant payment links. It still is for most businesses, even tiny ones like farmers and plumbers.
2. I still don't know why you think it's a problem for a farmer at a market to share their bank account number for people to pay them. Pretty much any business bank account number here is public information. But even if for some reason you think that it's hugely problematic, it's technically pretty simple to setup an instant payment system that don't require making any account number public.
Yes I understand what everyone is saying, that giving out the account number is not dangerous in itself and that businesses all over the world do it so they can accept payments, but generally the advice given to individuals is not to give out those details to random strangers (not because they can then take money out of it, but more likely use it for further phishing or whatever). My only point was that the message I originally replied to went totally against this general advice so I couldn't see it being a huge game changer as they had implied.
The GENERAL (I will super emphasize this word this time - G.E.N.E.R.A.L) advice from financial institutions for a very long time has been that scammers want your personal information, so to stay safe you should not give bank info to strangers. They also reccommend avoiding bank transfers, money grams and other such things and only using secure card payments.
Again, this is GENERAL advice, if someone wants someone else to send them money they can of course give them their account number and get the money transfered, I never said there was anything wrong with bank transfers, just that the GENERAL advice is to avoid them, they are often associated with scammers.
There was a prank call show on tv about 10 years ago called fonejacker (UK tv) and one of the characters used to ring people up and ask for their bank account details (example sketch here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA3zhzT1wDo ) and funnily enough, no one that I recall ever gave them out.
If 2 people want to make a transaction via bank transfer they can, but the GENERAL advice has always been to avoid them and don't be handing out bank details to strangers. Obviously, "dont give bank details to strangers" is not an exact quote from a financial institution, it is just the GENERAL theme of the overall advice to avoid being scammed.
I'm Irish as well, and your IBAN (bank account number) is not a secret. There's no real harm in giving it out. Hospitals, for example, provide their own IBAN in correspondence for payments via SEPA transfer.
You'll find as well that most of your banking apps allow you to save the IBAN of various contacts. I have the IBANs of a few friends and family members saved to my phone that way, and the only thing I can do with that information is send them money.
This isn't new. A few years ago a few countries (Germany being one of them) asked for an extension on having to implement instant transactions. Some German banks actually charge more for the instant bank transfers.
This is just the EU commission pushing for this game that they themselves started to end.
I feel this is too little, too late. People who would use this already have started using Credit/debit cards (instead of local systems). Bank account numbers are not easy to transmit (sure, we could do this via QR code, but that's a new piece of technology people would have to learn how to use). The internet has happened, and it works on credit card-style numbers.
Banks had a chance to introduce this ten years ago - but back then, they were greedy and wanted to keep money in limbo, most likely to have an advantage in taking interest. By now, the market has other, more internationally accepted modes of payment.
> By now, the market has other, more internationally accepted modes of payment.
Hundreds of millions of citizens gain access to instant payments through SEPA. It’s already compatible with the existing banking system Europeans are already used to, i.e. share an IBAN with someone and share money. Which other cheap instant payment methods are there that are available to so many people?
The overhead of card processors, while capped by law in the EU, is not zero, and not everybody can easily set up to receive payments. Various countries have systems like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipps which reduce the friction yet further.
>>> The only thing missing is forcing banks to provide an API for third party integrations
I believe they have to provide this API to comply with the PSD2 directive. Namely, they have to open the bank to TPPs (Third Party Payment Service Providers)
If I wire 200k I honestly don't care if it takes a few hours (nowadays, old-school SEPA transfers don't necessarily take more) and happens only during business days/hours. It gives everyone more room to cancel if you fucked up.
If I wire 200k to buy a car, I want that money to arrive instantly. I certainly do not want to spend hours at some parking lot waiting for the money to arrive, I want to sign the papers right there and then and take the car with me.
No fucking way I’m gonna leave some random with both the car and my 200k. So instead of sending a bank transfer, I still have to show up with a big bag of cash in 2022.
The amounts where multi-hour transaction times are consistently acceptable will be significantly higher, 200k is still well within normal everyday p2p transactions.
> 200k is still well within normal everyday p2p transactions.
You should probably get out of your bubble.
That said, it's a false dichotomy. You can perfectly allow sky-high limits to SCT Inst for customers who regularly need it, yet have more reasonable policies for the 99% of the population who's perfectly OK with a slow transfer when they wire money to a notary public to buy a property.
The other option when buying cars from Germany is to wait for the seller to receive your transfer, which could take a while if the seller is with a shitty bank.
This leaves the seller with both your money and your car.
In France we have a different tool called "bank check" which is basically a non-bounceable check coming from the bank's books (and the bank blocks the money on your account of course).
It's mostly useless I think because when you close on a house your notary is doing an escrow service, and I paid my house by bank transfert to my own notary (couldn't do it online, and their weird bank doesn't support receiving instant transferts).
It's not about being undecided, rather reverting mistakes. Scheduling a transfer would obviously work too.
The current way banks process non-instant SEPA transfers is very predictable and not a problem in some scenarios. SEPA is huge and breaking the old scheme to force everyone to move to SCT inst doesn't seem realistic anyway.
Similarly, the UK hasn't stopped using BACS even though the availability of Faster Payments is ubiquitous today.
It's basically a SEPA transfer as they already exist, except instant. I'm not sure how Poland would fit into this exactly as the press release specifically mentions payments in euro, not zloty.
Dutch banks have supported instant payments for a couple of years now, and the way person to person payments are most often done is through something called a "Tikkie" which involves sending someone a payment URL (via any messaging platform or a QR code) which then opens their own banking app on their phone.
Probably, a lot of banks in the EU have one or another instant payment system.
And many have somewhat adept ways to convenient setup bank transfer between two people (e.g. through an qr code), standardizing this would be a much bigger improvement then just standardizing the first part.
I guess the idea is to have a unified system throughout the EU, so if you are from Germany and you are on holiday in Portugal, you can still do instant transfers to pay in shops.
Sounds a lot like ING payments in Romania - takes seconds to transfer money in accounts at the same bank, and all you need is a phone number, or a qr code. Transferring to other banks takes a few hours and my understanding is that its getting faster.
Similar systems exist also in France (Paylib) and Sweden (Swish). Swish is embarassignly popular and also accepted in many shops. Making them compatible EU-wide seems like the logical next step.
I've read a lot of praise for India's IMPS. In a digitalized world with widespread usage of mobile devices universal instantaneous intra-bank payments are an obvious step forward. It'd be great if this could in some way remove the dependency on the payment processors duopoly while keeping fees low or non-existent (at the moment, depending on your gateway, instant SEPAs have a few euros fees) and decreasing friction as the proposal says, let alone the security implications. Merchants would also be more willing to adopt these technologies in less developed areas.
Instant payment in India (UPI) has been revolutionary. Last month 6.7 billion transaction took place amounting to $138B!! https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/product-statistics
Every major company tech company ( Google, meta, amazon, flipkart ) wants to be a part of it. This can be a huge opportunity for European startups
I can't express in words the amount of push UPI has provided in India for the digital payments sector. Any shop I have visited in the past year has a QR code on the Front counter. And I am not talking about big shops. I am talking about Hawkers, street vendors, Brick and Mortar shops, roadside Dhabas, Mechanics.
Depending on banks and countries instant payments have been a thing for a long time in “Europe” (assumed to mean EU and satellites). The question here is about taking things to the next level for international payments (these countries are sovereign and have their own policies, the eu wants to ensure uniformity). So this is not comparable to what india does within its own borders.
> Depending on banks and countries instant payments have been a thing for a long time
Like how?
Mandatory implementation of accepting SEPA instant directive to banks was like 2-3 years ago. Afaik there was no instant payment within most of the major economies, case Germany. Banking outside UK in europe is still a pain for business and consumer.
EU commission would want consistency, but nothing was stopping Bundesbank from innovating.
Hrr Hrr. Meanwhile, Deutsche Postbank ATM (because Cashgroup), 3rd time in a row of three months, at the beginning of a month in the late evening: This Service is currently not available. In different locations. Deutsche Bank has no open ATM locations at late evening or night anymore. While Shell does it. They make cash suck more and more. Grr!
This map is my pet peeve. Because after you've entered your PLZ/Zip or address, it doesn't even show all ATMs. You have to 'wiggle' the map a little, then others pop up. And depending on how you zoom in, they disappear again. Have to 're-wiggle' carefully. If you pan far, it takes time for the ATMs in that area to pop up, if at all. Again, 'wiggling' is needed.
And it still doesn't show one who I pass by often, know it's in operation, but is useless anyways, because: Dieser Service ist derzeit nicht verfügbar.
ARRGH! Trashgroup!
Edit: On FF with uBo off btw., just to be sure.
Edit: Can't get over it. There is one Bank next to my now closed Bank which had an ATM, which now has a sign to use the next one from Postbank, which doesn't even show up on their map, and which gives you the No Service message regardless.
We have Interac e-mail and SMS transfers in Canada.
No need to give out bank details. Just give someone your e-mail or phone number and they can send you money via their bank app. They don't even need to know which bank you use.
Interac is a network by the bank cartel in Canada, not run by the government. Payments Canada is working on Real-Time Rail as a payment system that is independent from the banks. For example if you send funds to your brokerage they take 24+ hours to arrive, with Real-Time they'll arrive in a minute.
I want to send money or request money from someone?
1. Ask for their info (e-mail or phone number)
2. Login to my banking service (web or app)
3. Create a new contact with 1.
4. If they did not setup auto-deposit: setup a security question
5. Send/Request money (+ security question, if needed)
6. Wait few seconds~minutes for an email/SMS
7. If you did not setup auto-deposit: Click on link provided to open 2.
I deal with a few people who clearly receive regular Interac payments, but still haven't figured out how to associate their email with their bank account. Thus requiring the question.
ps. Don't get me started about figuring out how to send automated payments and if you're lucky enough to find a bank that has a broken API to this.
I use interac because I don't have a choice.
I don't understand the whole security question plus having to create a user account. Just send the money. If you made a mistake, your fault.
Good. And cut out the US American payment giants as soon as possible. Allowing them to control such a large amount of inter-EU payments is a huge security risk.
Every country, or union of countries, should be in full control over its payment services and infrastructure.
Instant payments in euro? It's called cash you fucking authoritarians! It is never "locked in transit in the financial system" and can be instantly "consumed" and "invested" by the receiving party.
> while preserving the effectiveness of screening of persons that are subject to EU sanctions, through a procedure whereby payment service providers will verify at least daily their clients against EU sanctions lists
> in full conformity with existing rules on sanctions and fighting financial crime
The real reason: to have government approve every transaction. Sure they mean russians now but it will expand. We've seen the massive overreach of government force the past 2 years to keep people confined in their homes. Too critical of government? Sanctioned. Bought too many calories? Sanctioned. Bought too many joules of energy? Sanctioned.
Singapore has something similar with paynow and friends, literally instant payments in seconds and all you need is the person's cell phone number. It really is something different, but SG is just a city. Having such a system over the whole eurozone would be quite something.
Also, Something to take into account is that, most of the time, delays in wire transfers are due to bank compliance checks imposed by states! (In addition with bank usual incompétences)
Australia did a strategic review of payments in 2012, one of the findings was they needed instant payments - it was rolled out in 2018. The days of waiting days and days for money to transfer between banks/accounts/etc are a thing of the past and it is great. Great to see the same sort of capabilities coming to the EU!
Wire transfers already have a maximum limit of one day inside the EU, so at least you don’t have to wait days and days.
Instant payments have the advantage that they better integrate into online shopping. You could have used signed receipts for the wire transfer by the bank instead though.
This would be welcome in France. We have middle-age grade banking where "instant transfers" are very limited and they are presented as a revolution.
I recently visited Poland and their banking/payment system is amazing (especially Blik). Anything that moves is France ahead will be great.
I do not even touch the question of the login screens that are atrocious. Boursorama (largest online bank) had me chose exactly 8 digits PIN to log in. Fortuneo broke their logging screen.
150 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 236 ms ] thread> with an obligation on providers to verify the match between the bank account number (IBAN) and the name of the beneficiary provided by the payer
This will break a lot of payment flows, currently that verification is rarely enforced. For example I have saved "power company" as receiver's name, the transfers still work since everything besides IBAN is ignored.
Right now the receiving bank can silently start being compliant overnight and you won't know. If there's some official deadline, this gives the opportunity to warn all parties beforehand.
EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG
Yes, EnBW, the shorthand for the name, is PART of the official name, yes, that is an Umlaut, and yes, the name is too long to fit into the standard account holder field of a SEPA transfer. So I send my electricity money to the "EnBW AG", which always worked, but is technically wrong (and technically, there is no obvious "real" solution, because their letterhead and their prefilled paper slips all use the full name, which - again - uses a too long, incorrectly-alphabeticized variant.
Now, for some extra fun, what about legal forms that have a & (illegal character) in it? Kombine GmbH & Co. KG cannot be addressed, but is a valid name.
And how do you teach an 80 year old grandmother - who up to now keeps filling out paper forms - to do this correctly on a screen the sized half a postcard wide?
You need to enter the account holder name and select personal or business (with laxer rules for the latter, I assume). The API returns perfect match or partial match (actual holder name) and allows you to proceed, or no match.
A paper form means there's a human who enters the data at some point, no?
Which seems incorrect as 10 second payments EU-wide obviously require universal adoption of updated IT systems and more stringent control to guarantee that 10 second deadline.
The increased costs will inevitably have to be paid for somehow, likely via incereased fees.
Eg. my bank charges 7€ for an instant transfer, slow transfers are free. This proposal would make all transfers free and instant.
They are just trying to make a quick profit.
Just like card payment processing fees, this is a case where banks are overcharging for a service, and the EU will fix the situation.
The situation is comparable to mobiles in a decade - it's a profit center for banks, the systems are there but they make more money by getting in the way. So the EU need to step in and regulate this market failure.
Plenty of other governments have done that essentially by threat or mandate though? UK has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments and Thailand has https://www.bangkokbank.com/en/Personal/Digital-Banking/Prom... -- I don't remember my fees going up in either country
The only thing missing is forcing banks to provide an API for third party integrations, but I think there is a separate proposal on the way for that.
Imagine being able to accept instant payments from everyone in the EU, without having to sign up for a service like Stripe or Paypal, just using a normal bank account from any of hundreds (thousands?) of banks in the EU. And your customers don't even need a credit card, just the banking app they already use every day.
Europeans? They’ll figure out a way to require chipTAN and SMS confirmation for POS transactions.
The US "instant payments" is Venmo/PayPal which are secondary to the banks not primary.
[1] https://fps.hkicl.com.hk/eng/fps/index.php [2] https://www.hsbc.com.hk/campaigns/fps/
This is about making all that work with Euro accounts from different countries.
Made some stupid comment online while being drunk? We take your ability to by transportation passes/plane tickets...
IIRC this is already happening in China.
Not in china though:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/1/18246297/china-transportat...
Allegedly there are the 'green' trains, because using older green wagons.
They aren't high-speed, but drive everywhere. As do busses. Which allegedly you can use. Just takes longer.
More scary IMO because the US / Europe will never be China, but it's easy to see some president in the US logic their way into the same position as Canada, and use the same state apparatuses to banish dissenters.
Oh, you made an inapropriate comment on twitter... no more concerts and movie tickets for you.
As said by someone else below, china has a similar system in place, where chinese people with low social scores cannot buy public transportation tickets.
And I also don't think the government needs to know you went to a buttplug store and bought an XXXL buttplug there. (especially if you're a guy, unmarried, and the government is anti lgbt oriented).
In the area where this instant payment system will go up, health insurance is universal and government regulated as well :)
Your health insurance might not go up, but you could find procedures being denied if, based on your purchases and behavior, the cost would be a poor investment for society and the state.
If you get denied of a procedures because of previous purchases and behaviour that the government insurance does not want to cover; the private sector will be happy to serve you.
Except the Eu is slowly privatizing its healthcare with the pressure from the US.
I mean, you’re exaggerating. But yes, I’d like obese people to pay more for insurance. Also, if government thinks booze is bad it shouldn’t sell it.
> As said by someone else below, china has a similar system in place
Anecdotally, I asked about this a Chinese friend I studied with in Europe. She said “Social credit? What’s that?” It’s not that she can’t read, she’s on Instagram and WhatsApp.
The question for you is whether the government has a need or the right to know every penny (or whatever fractional currency you can legally use) that you move around. This shouldn’t be confused with the government having a need to know about incomes and/or wealth for taxation purposes. Sales or consumption taxes collected by sellers don’t typically care who exactly pays it or what the mode of payment is.
Trusting a nebulous entity like a government to track every expense and every money transfer would be draconian, and would be understandable only in dictatorships and authoritarian regimes (and the ones very close to becoming one).
First, there is nothing like the government in Europe.
Secondly, the organisms that are tracking as extensively as possible European citizen are mostly private firms (whose parent companies are typically not European). European directives like GPDR are on the contrary rather shielding European citizen privacy if anything.
I doubt this proposition is forcing to withdraw cash within euro zone. Citizen are free to continue to use cash or not at there discretion.
technically no... but in practice, yes.
EU decides something, and local governments must implement the EU-wide changes into local laws.
If EU decides to do something, they do it... the states are not as sovereign as it might seem.
I mean... look at EU banning RT (dot com) - https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2022...
EU decided to identify payers of bills (or bank transfers) above 1000eur, and every country had to pass the law ( https://www.eumonitor.eu/9353000/1/j4nvk6yhcbpeywk_j9vvik7m1... )
So yeah... EU is "the government", there's just one step in between.
The thing is, "EU decides" hides all the complexity of the reality. First of all, "Europe Union" can refer to many things. Here, most likely the sentence refers to the European Parliament. European Commission, European Council, euro area are three other distinct notions for example that can be easily confused with EU.
>the states are not as sovereign as it might seem.
They prioritize their sovereign decision power on staying unified above local punctual interests… or not, as the Brexit showed. States, so far, remain sovereign, even if they accept to bow before collegial decisions in which they themselves participate.
European Council is the institution that is generally presented as "the government".
There is no reason to allow them to know more, but there are very good reasons to let them only know what they really need to know.
I don't see why transactions that use cash today, wont use cash tomorrow
2. Why do you believe that an instant payment system requires us to "give out our bank details to every stranger we meet at the market" when numerous countries have already implemented such systems that don't require that?
At least in the case of Germany, this is factually incorrect: We do have Lastschrift, which is eerily similar to "drawing money from an account". Sure, we can get that money back during a six week period IF the receiver still has it, but it is a hassle.
What? I thought the main problem was how easy it is to do identity theft in the US. You mean I can steal someone's money with just their account number ?!?
2. I was replying to a message, and in that message the user gave the example that at a farmers market someone could pay using a bank transfer. If I'm a farmer at that market I'm going to have to give my bank account details to all the strangers who want to buy a few apples from me, so they can instantly transfer money to my account.
You shouldn't give out usernames and passwords. Your bank account number is not a secret.
> I'm going to have to give my bank account details to all the strangers who want to buy a few apples from me
I don't know what it's like in Ireland, but literally every business in Austria prints their bank account number on the invoice so you can pay it. Bank account numbers are not secret. There's not much people can do with a bank account number apart from send money to it.
It's pretty much the same in Ireland, I've no idea what the other commenter thinks can be accomplished with an IBAN.
Seen as you are also Irish you will appreciate this example: https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/consumer/common_consum...
Under the header 'Protect your money', the first bullet point is never use bank tranfers.
The first bullet point is
"Never send money by bank transfer unless you are absolutely certain you are sending it to someone you know and trust. Sending money by bank transfer is like sending someone cash and generally, once you send it, it’s gone"
which is about paying by bank transfers, and very different from "never hand out your bank account to receive payments", which pretty much every business (that do not want the keep their proceeds off the record) does by default in many (most?) European countries.
Sure, if some stranger on the street asked for my bank account (or my name for that matter) out of the blue, I wouldn't do so. But for Craigslist type in-person sales, people here have no problem giving their bank account to receive payments. The typical fraud is here is asking for payments of to be delivered goods and subsequently not sending the promised goods, which is what I understand your link is also warning about. Because European bank payments are mostly push-type, that are largely irreversible. For direct in-person sales (such as farmers on a market), that's not an issue.
Someone could transfer money to you and write "thanks for the plutonium" into the reference field.
2. I still don't know why you think it's a problem for a farmer at a market to share their bank account number for people to pay them. Pretty much any business bank account number here is public information. But even if for some reason you think that it's hugely problematic, it's technically pretty simple to setup an instant payment system that don't require making any account number public.
The GENERAL (I will super emphasize this word this time - G.E.N.E.R.A.L) advice from financial institutions for a very long time has been that scammers want your personal information, so to stay safe you should not give bank info to strangers. They also reccommend avoiding bank transfers, money grams and other such things and only using secure card payments.
Again, this is GENERAL advice, if someone wants someone else to send them money they can of course give them their account number and get the money transfered, I never said there was anything wrong with bank transfers, just that the GENERAL advice is to avoid them, they are often associated with scammers.
There was a prank call show on tv about 10 years ago called fonejacker (UK tv) and one of the characters used to ring people up and ask for their bank account details (example sketch here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA3zhzT1wDo ) and funnily enough, no one that I recall ever gave them out.
If 2 people want to make a transaction via bank transfer they can, but the GENERAL advice has always been to avoid them and don't be handing out bank details to strangers. Obviously, "dont give bank details to strangers" is not an exact quote from a financial institution, it is just the GENERAL theme of the overall advice to avoid being scammed.
You'll find as well that most of your banking apps allow you to save the IBAN of various contacts. I have the IBANs of a few friends and family members saved to my phone that way, and the only thing I can do with that information is send them money.
This is just the EU commission pushing for this game that they themselves started to end.
Banks had a chance to introduce this ten years ago - but back then, they were greedy and wanted to keep money in limbo, most likely to have an advantage in taking interest. By now, the market has other, more internationally accepted modes of payment.
Hundreds of millions of citizens gain access to instant payments through SEPA. It’s already compatible with the existing banking system Europeans are already used to, i.e. share an IBAN with someone and share money. Which other cheap instant payment methods are there that are available to so many people?
and that's a usability disaster. the entire experience is atrocious, you have to enter and secure multiple pieces of numeric data.
it's a system begging to be disrupted.
My regular taco place here only accepts cash or bank transfers, no cards.
I believe they have to provide this API to comply with the PSD2 directive. Namely, they have to open the bank to TPPs (Third Party Payment Service Providers)
No fucking way I’m gonna leave some random with both the car and my 200k. So instead of sending a bank transfer, I still have to show up with a big bag of cash in 2022.
The amounts where multi-hour transaction times are consistently acceptable will be significantly higher, 200k is still well within normal everyday p2p transactions.
You should probably get out of your bubble.
That said, it's a false dichotomy. You can perfectly allow sky-high limits to SCT Inst for customers who regularly need it, yet have more reasonable policies for the 99% of the population who's perfectly OK with a slow transfer when they wire money to a notary public to buy a property.
This leaves the seller with both your money and your car.
It's mostly useless I think because when you close on a house your notary is doing an escrow service, and I paid my house by bank transfert to my own notary (couldn't do it online, and their weird bank doesn't support receiving instant transferts).
The current way banks process non-instant SEPA transfers is very predictable and not a problem in some scenarios. SEPA is huge and breaking the old scheme to force everyone to move to SCT inst doesn't seem realistic anyway.
Similarly, the UK hasn't stopped using BACS even though the availability of Faster Payments is ubiquitous today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blik
Instant payments
Money transfers over phone number
2 minutes payment codes that you type on e.g website and accept payment in app
Shopping example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBw1qa07gGU
Stats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDI4R94ZLvM
Dutch banks have supported instant payments for a couple of years now, and the way person to person payments are most often done is through something called a "Tikkie" which involves sending someone a payment URL (via any messaging platform or a QR code) which then opens their own banking app on their phone.
And many have somewhat adept ways to convenient setup bank transfer between two people (e.g. through an qr code), standardizing this would be a much bigger improvement then just standardizing the first part.
UPI is a gamechanger.
Like how?
Mandatory implementation of accepting SEPA instant directive to banks was like 2-3 years ago. Afaik there was no instant payment within most of the major economies, case Germany. Banking outside UK in europe is still a pain for business and consumer.
EU commission would want consistency, but nothing was stopping Bundesbank from innovating.
This map is my pet peeve. Because after you've entered your PLZ/Zip or address, it doesn't even show all ATMs. You have to 'wiggle' the map a little, then others pop up. And depending on how you zoom in, they disappear again. Have to 're-wiggle' carefully. If you pan far, it takes time for the ATMs in that area to pop up, if at all. Again, 'wiggling' is needed.
And it still doesn't show one who I pass by often, know it's in operation, but is useless anyways, because: Dieser Service ist derzeit nicht verfügbar.
ARRGH! Trashgroup!
Edit: On FF with uBo off btw., just to be sure.
Edit: Can't get over it. There is one Bank next to my now closed Bank which had an ATM, which now has a sign to use the next one from Postbank, which doesn't even show up on their map, and which gives you the No Service message regardless.
It makes a great impression right from the start with the comically squashed map of Germany: the aspect ratio depends on the window size.
Thank you very much for your report. It’s good to know that these are not isolated incidents.
No need to give out bank details. Just give someone your e-mail or phone number and they can send you money via their bank app. They don't even need to know which bank you use.
I want to send money or request money from someone?
Really...But perhaps we have a different level of tolerance. For me, it's convenient.
ps. Don't get me started about figuring out how to send automated payments and if you're lucky enough to find a bank that has a broken API to this.
Every country, or union of countries, should be in full control over its payment services and infrastructure.
https://archive.ph/mP9Bb
Instant payments in euro? It's called cash you fucking authoritarians! It is never "locked in transit in the financial system" and can be instantly "consumed" and "invested" by the receiving party.
> while preserving the effectiveness of screening of persons that are subject to EU sanctions, through a procedure whereby payment service providers will verify at least daily their clients against EU sanctions lists
> in full conformity with existing rules on sanctions and fighting financial crime
The real reason: to have government approve every transaction. Sure they mean russians now but it will expand. We've seen the massive overreach of government force the past 2 years to keep people confined in their homes. Too critical of government? Sanctioned. Bought too many calories? Sanctioned. Bought too many joules of energy? Sanctioned.
Instant payments have the advantage that they better integrate into online shopping. You could have used signed receipts for the wire transfer by the bank instead though.
I recently visited Poland and their banking/payment system is amazing (especially Blik). Anything that moves is France ahead will be great.
I do not even touch the question of the login screens that are atrocious. Boursorama (largest online bank) had me chose exactly 8 digits PIN to log in. Fortuneo broke their logging screen.
None of them care the slightest.