It's still baffling to me that the US, unlike most other countries, have never developed "push" bank/credit transfers.
Checks might have been useful historically, but I really can't think of any use case these days where I'd prefer writing a check over just instructing my bank to pay somebody directly, which has the huge advantage of being more secure (my bank and I can agree on any security measures we like, vs. having to trust various third parties to "authenticate" a piece of paper and a signature) and avoids having to "balance my checking account" entirely.
> It's still baffling to me that the US, unlike most other countries, have never developed "push" bank/credit transfers.
My (US) bank has this functionality. It's a real pain to set up, and most people I know will prefer Venmo/Paypal, or god help me Zello, before a bank-to-bank transfer.
> my bank and I can agree on any security measures we like
Well … so it's more like my bank and I can agree on any security measures the bank likes. My opinion doesn't matter to them, or there'd be some actual cryptography involved.
My bank's set up / "security" involves an odd song and dance of depositing a few cents into the destination's bank account over multiple transactions over multiple days, and then using the transaction amounts as some sort of authentication.
I've done it for transfers that exceed what I am comfortable sending on the payment services above. (And I don't have/use checks.)
> Well … so it's more like my bank and I can agree on any security measures the bank likes.
Yes, I'm unfortunately very aware of the incredible market failure in the US in that regard.
There's a much bigger variety of means of initiating bank transfers in Europe, probably simply because push bank transfers are a thing in the first place (the security of which banks are often liable for).
Looking at the dumpster fire that is Zelle, US banks apparently just don't seem to want to cannibalize their profitable debit/credit card business with a cheap, fast, and secure payment method.
India has UPI. The RBI spun it up in what, a couple years?
The issue isn't technological, it's this notion in the US that rent-seekers ought to exist and be enabled. Your Paypal/Venmo, CashApp, etc. enable things, for a cut of the transaction, that you can do for exactly zero dollars in India.
>It's still baffling to me that the US, unlike most other countries, have never developed "push" bank/credit transfers.
ACH and Zelle are both "push" transfers, although the former isn't typically available to consumers. Businesses certainly use it to do direct payroll deposits, for instance.
Yes, and I find that baffling. Many countries have had push transfers for decades.
Germany and Austria, for example, had standardized slips of paper that the payer could send to/drop off at their bank to instruct them to wire money to some payee at a nominal or no fee. The big advantage over checks is that there's no possibility of overdrawing, and as a payee, once you saw the money in your account, you knew the transfer was final (unlike for deposited checks, which can bounce).
This also means that there is much less risk for banks to open "checking" accounts, as the biggest risk for depository banks, i.e. that of potentially bounced checks, just does not exist, which in turn means that "unbanking" is much less of a concern.
Checks might have been useful historically, but I really can't think of any use case these days where I'd prefer writing a check over just instructing my bank to pay somebody directly, which has the huge advantage of being more secure (my bank and I can agree on any security measures we like, vs. having to trust various third parties to "authenticate" a piece of paper and a signature) and avoids having to "balance my checking account" entirely.