Ancestors

Written by Dana Fried on 2025-01-28 at 12:45

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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Written by Fragarach on 2025-01-28 at 13:29

@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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Toot

Written by David Chisnall (Now with 50% more sarcasm!) on 2025-01-28 at 14:55

@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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Descendants

Written by Fragarach on 2025-01-28 at 15:02

@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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