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There is no such thing as an international wiretransfer. Instead what you have is a set of agreements between gateway banks in each country allowing for the money to be made available from one country to another.

Other than that it's mainly consumer protection and the EU attempts to standarize everyhting vs. US less restrictive and more, leave it to the market to establish standards.

For historical context the Europe had a head start when it came to mobile with their implementation of the GSM standard where as the US was mostly left to find a winner between competing standards.

The EU have not specific advantage to the US today on the contrary one might say.

So basically what you have is a EU who are forcing standards down on countries vs. a US which let the markets mostly figure things out by themselves.




But it seems the standards forced down by the EU resulted in a faster, more efficient system?

As a private individual or person doing business in the EU I don't have to care about the different gateways in various EU countries or the difference between ACH and wire. I just make a transfer via online banking or authorize a SEPA Direct Debit withdrawal by ticking a checkbox in an online shop. There's zero friction.

Whether the transaction is completed instantly or within a business day usually doesn't matter much. There's no faffing about with paper cheques (because seriously what century is this) and I don't have to talk to any humans to do it. Rent and utilities are deducted from my bank account every month until I revoke the authorisation.

Watching American sitcoms with mom or dad poring over a stack of bills and writing cheques seems like a flashback to the 1950s.


I don't think so. The EU isn't better off than the US when it comes to cellphone standards as such and it certainly haven't made them any better at building successful companies.

EU is trying to solve a bunch of things through legislation which the market should be solving on it it's own.


> EU is trying to solve a bunch of things through legislation which the market should be solving on it it's own.

Maybe because they know that the market doesn't solve such problems, it only makes them worse. Market players profit from creating barriers for customers and keeping the system balkanized; it takes a strong actor outside of that market to force a common standard.

See also: why sending files directly between a computer running Apple's OS and one running Microsoft's OS is so ridiculously complicated.


Is it? Both support SMB.


Can your grandpa handle it?


It haven't put the EU in any better position than the US.




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