I just paid rent. It was free, through my bank app, and got to my landlord basically instantly. All I needed was my property manager's email address.
I could send money to a friend the same way.
This doesn't sound much different than ACH or PayPal but I assure you it is 1000% nicer.
One of the many things you don't realize living in the US is how much friction is added to basically everything you do to ensure some middleman or service provider can profit off of it.
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Add to this list:
It's the little things, you know?
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@tess That's free in the US to me thru my bank's website, but takes a day or two to arrive.
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@dalias @tess Many landlords/condos have auto-deduct to a tenant bank account. It's auto-processed by landlord/condo without anyone, them or renter, thinking about it, and no fee. Once authorized by the tenant, of course.
Win-win.
That may certainly not apply to every landlord! But it is in their interest to set it up since payment is now automatic and never late.
Lots of other bills, fees, credit cards, utilities, you can do the same.
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@MarkSquiresWine @tess Yeah, no thanks. The fine print for that always allows them to do abusive things, and even if not, you can end up with overdrafts because it's via ACH which isn't synchronous with available balance.
Even if you want automated payments, you want them scheduled and initiated "push" by the sender at their bank, not "pull" by the recipient.
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@dalias @tess Well, I'm fortunate that I point to accounts that won't have overdraft issues.
I was a lawyer. I read these once upon a time. I've had auto deductions for 20 years with some vendors. No issues.
What fine print and abuses are you talking about specifically?
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@MarkSquiresWine @tess Like pretty sure they'd authorize the landlord to charge you extra for claimed damages when you move out, rather than them having to go to court if they want more than your deposit. Or even if not really authorized, slimy landlord would do it if they thought you couldn't afford a lawyer.
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@dalias @tess I see nothing like that authorized in my ACH.
If you're confronted with a lawless crook, ultimately there's a problem somewhere. No game plan fixes everything. They will find a way to drive you crazy somehow if there is an imbalance in power. (It's one reason I became a lawyer!)
OTOH, with auto-deduct, I have never had a late fee or notice, have a great credit rating as a result, and my obligation gets auto paid even if I'm traveling out of the country. It has advantages too.
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@MarkSquiresWine
Dude that's the combination of auto deduct and having a high enough balance. Not just auto deduct. Most people don't have significant extra money in the account - if the rent & an unexpected medium expense hit at the same time it can really screw most Americans.
@dalias @tess
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@thesquirrelfish @MarkSquiresWine @dalias @tess I've had rent and utilities double and triple deduct from my account due to system errors. It's a terrible system
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@feld
I've been using auto deduct on various bills from credit cards to rent for decades.
That's never happened to me, even once. With several merchants of different types over DECADES. You must be really unlucky. But your experience is not mine or universal.
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@MarkSquiresWine
Correct, you are in a minority who are privileged enough to have not experienced these problems so far.
@feld
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@thesquirrelfish @MarkSquiresWine consider also if the company doing the ACH debits gets hacked you can do all sorts of fun thing with that information, like using the account to fund stolen credit card accounts because credit card companies don't do any extra authorization when you add an ACH as the funding source
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@feld Every time you pay someone with a check, online or paper, they see your bank account number and the routing number. Which is all you give them when you want an ACH deduction. What's the difference?
Unless you're going to commit to giving them cash payments every month or going to the effort of getting a money order, they already have your account information anytime they want to take a look at it. Nothing has really changed.
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@MarkSquiresWine Yeah that's why I haven't used checks in over 10 years. Even for my business. If I have to pay and can't do it electronically I go get a money order or if possible use my bank's ability to send a check on my behalf using their account
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@MarkSquiresWine Reminder that we're the only country on the planet that still still uses banking technology from the 1980s because we are afraid of disrupting Visa/Mastercard.
Thankfully crypto will solve this. I'd gladly do more payments with stablecoins if I had the option.
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@dalias @MarkSquiresWine @tess
One of the first things you do when moving out is cancel the authorization, copy to the bank. So simple.
Standard in Europe, rent, utilities, the lot .
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@uc @MarkSquiresWine @tess ACH has no such concept as cancelling authorization.
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@dalias @MarkSquiresWine @tess
Then why sign it?
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@uc @MarkSquiresWine @tess There's no signature. All it takes is knowing the bank and account number. Any signed authorization is just evidence if the person you're pulling money from takes you to court, not part of getting the money.
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@dalias @MarkSquiresWine @tess
Wouldn't be legal in the real world. If I don't authorize payment, it doesn't happen. If someone tries taking payment without authorization I recall it with the click of a button.
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@dalias @uc @tess
To authorize ACH, I went to my vendors' sites and said I authorize ACH auto-pay and entered my bank account information.
All I have to do to unauthorize it is go back to the site and uncheck that box. I can also remove the bank account information as a method of payment from that part of the vendor site.
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@MarkSquiresWine @dalias @tess
Electronic signature, in effect.
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@tess
Does that mean the Venmo or CashApp I've read about?
UK here, if someone gives me their bank sort code and account number, I can send money almost instantaneously.
It's safe, their giving me those details, because that only lets people pay money in, they can't do anything else with it.
All a middleman adds is unnecessary risk and expense.
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@Fragarach @tess This is mostly true, although Jeremy Clarkson demonstrated the 'mostly' part when he claimed it was completely true.
He put his account number and sort code in a newspaper article to show that it was safe. It turns out that this is basically all you need to set up a Direct Debit, which someone did (to an environmental charity, as I recall). The DD guarantee means that all payments made will be reversed as soon as the sender complains and it's then up to the recipient to reclaim the money in this case if the payments were legitimate.
This same guarantee makes paying for things with DD quite safe in the UK: as soon as there's a problem, you call your bank and get the money back immediately and the payee then has to take you to court if they really were owed the money.
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@david_chisnall @tess
Fair point. It's surprisingly easy to set up a DD although, as you point out, the protection is robust.
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@tess payments were a shock to me when I moved to Europe. It's so frictionless! No wonder PayPal wasn't invented here.
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@tess It’s been like that in Canada for a couple decades. WTF USA?!
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@tess It’s smooth. Having moved to Canada from the US, its not all that special. Interac has been a thing here since mid 80s.
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@tess banking in the US feels like the 1990s in the UK.
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@coldclimate @tess That’s because banking in the US still runs on 90s technology. I wish I were joking.
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@coldclimate @tess It's worse than that: there were standing orders in the UK long before the 1990s. The idea of having to take time out of your day to "pay rent" as a regular activity, rather than it being something you set up once every few years, is itself perplexing to me.
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@threedaymonk @tess true
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@tess Sure do wish we had Zelle in the US.
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@ThisAccountKillsFascists I did, but not everyone has it and it's still a third-party service.
(Also it was introduced in 2017 and everyone else has been doing this for years. And it's private, for-profit compared to e.g. interac, etc.)
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@tess @ThisAccountKillsFascists
And mostly got shut down at our old bank in the past month due to enforcement actions. Several large banks are affected.
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@Vrimj @ThisAccountKillsFascists I did not know but I am not surprised
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@tess @ThisAccountKillsFascists https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-sues-jpmorgan-chase-bank-of-america-and-wells-fargo-for-allowing-fraud-to-fester-on-zelle/
They are not wrong but also it sucks a lot.
This is a thing a banking system should just do.
Next thing you know some minicomputer will break and people will have to go back to exchanging bags of checks in a parking lot like they did before ACH
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@tess I don’t get it, what do people have to do in the US to pay through the bank app?
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@tess Zelle kinda fills this need in the US but everyone has to have a Zelle setup through their bank
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@tess
Have been doing that for at least 10 years in the UK... it's guaranteed and takes a maximum of two hours to transfer - depending on the receiving bank account its usually instant. 👍
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@tess not my current apartment, but in my last one I could do the exact same thing and I lived in Chicago. It was painless, almost instant, had 0 extra fees, the money went directly to my landlord and all I needed was their phone number, and I did it all within my banking app.
I’m not saying you didn’t have an obnoxious process for rent, but that experience isn’t universal.
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@tess I've not lived in the USA since I was a kid, but... what's different there? Is a direct bank transfer just not possible?
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@tess oh yes, that was the weirdest culture shock when I moved to the US. Germany (where I moved from) is known for being behind the curve with digital services, so I was extremely confused when the US banking system was that shit!
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@tess trying out a new country is really interesting and provides a lot of opportunity for reflecting on the things that you'd always taken for granted.
I felt similar things when I moved from Canada -> USA and started noticing al lof the little things for the first time (like, why do we need 5 levels of police? BART police on the subway, city police, county police, state police, campus police)
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@tess So many people in this thread defending the system of the landlord's hand being in your pocket to take your money instead of your own hand.
Especially for rent, which doesn't change amount every month, standing order > direct debit.
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@tess American living in NZ here. 100% agree.
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@tess its wild to see Americans talk about how much effort it is to send/ transfer money. In Canada there’s 1 company that connects almost all financial institutions. Interac started as a non-profit venture between the major banks. We’ve been doing e-transfers since the early 2000’s. It’s free with most financial institutions and almost instantaneous. Lots of people pay rent this way
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@tess Here in Spain there's something called Bizum. It needs your bank's mobile app and the person's phone number.
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@WeirdWriter @tess The US is a capitalist society. :(
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You can say that again! @sapphireangel @tess
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@WeirdWriter @tess Yeah, and that capitalist way is going to hurt so many.
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@tess I moved to the US in 1995, after paying all regular bills by direct debit for over a decade, and suddenly I was writing monthly cheques (checks!) again. Couldn’t believe how Americans thought their tech was superior! Exceptionslism is strong still.
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@tess In Canada, we've have had a service called #interac for more than 20 years, allowing for transfer of funds between Canadian banks to people via email address or phone number. https://www.interac.ca/
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@alexblock as it turns out, that's how I paid said rent
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@tess which js why despite it being available in other countries, I don't have PayPal. It's shit and an evil company. We have local alternatives which are much better with like, only have the evilness
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@tess@mastodon.social where are you living, just to ask?
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@amigaunicorn check my profile banner
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@tess I hope your property manager is honest. I once had a landlord accuse me of being four months behind on my rent. Turns out the property manager was keeping my funds and not forwarding them onto the landlord. I'm glad you have bank records to refute this.
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