if i transfer money from one bank's account to another, it takes minimum of 48 hours if I make the request before 3pm cutoff time. Day 1, the transfer request is made at 1pm. Day 2, the money is no longer available in the sending account yet not in the receiving account. Day 3, the money is available in the receiving account. If I do it after 3pm, the request is not placed until Day 2. Why? WTF does a computer have a cutoff time? Does it go home and cook dinner for the family and do homework with the kids?
>took some form of electronic payment
These are nothing but electronic requests. No human needs to be involved, yet here we are. But sure, let's go ahead and argue like I don't have valid issues because you seem to not have any.
Wait for FedNow to get rolled out. That is the Federal Reserve's instant payment system. It does need to be implemented by banks cause it is just an API. One nice feature is that it has push model, pulling money means making request that can be approved which should increase the security.
The problem with pushing payments is that the cost of fraud falls on the payer. In the pull model, if the payer says it was unauthorized, the rules favor the payer--restoring the payer account happens as a matter of course, and disputes are handled subsequently. This sucks for the payee, but they're usually businesses who are more sophisticated and better placed to handle these issues. But in the push model, the presumption is the payment was intended by the payer. It's a wholly reasonable presumption assuming sophisticated, rational agents. But we're talking rolling out push payment systems where the payer will be your elderly grandmother.
It won't be pretty unless there are some aggressive changes to existing regulatory and legal frameworks. But it's not easy to figure out to protect consumers in push payment systems without opening gaps where fraudsters can directly abuse the system, like checking kiting scams of old. (Checks are a pull payment type of system, but the important point is that the cost of check fraud--forged, kiting, etc--fell primarily on banks and merchants, and less on individual grandmas who couldn't buy food because they were stuck in a months-long battle with the bank to recover funds.)
Pulling fraud with ACH is pretty rare. All the scammers trick people into sending them money, or take over account and send it, this is more common with phones and Zelle. The latter would be handled with current system. The former isn't handled with current system, and would be helped if there was way to reject transfers to help with return money scams.
There is danger that people will send money on bogus requests, but invoice fraud is already covered. Other countries have the same model of sharing account number widely and it works.
> There is danger that people will send money on bogus requests
It's a huge danger. This is why there are so many Bitcoin ATMs in convenience stores. Scammers call vulnerable people and induce them to send them Bitcoin. The number of people who you can convince to withdraw hard currency from their bank and feed it into a Bitcoin machine on the request of their "sick nephew" or "Microsoft Security Team" is mind blowing. Even elderly former police and attorneys do this.
Push payments make it much, much easier--now it's just a click away. The risk is higher for the scammer and it's easier to trace as compared to Bitcoin transfers. But it will be an endless game of whack-a-mole, and because the losses won't primarily fall on banks, payment networks, or other least code avoiders (unlike with credit cards--especially--or other forms of pull payment in general), there's less direct economic incentive to do prevention. We'll likely end up with more centralized, government policing, which will be far less effective and generate more political friction.
Push payments are the future. They're already ubiquitous in many other countries. But while it will streamline day-to-day transactions, there are going to be many more victims of fraud left holding the bag. And you can see this in Europe, where push payment fraud is rapidly expanding.
And even if, in nominal dollar amount, total push fraud ended up equivalent to pull (e.g. credit card) fraud, the social cost is greater as you end up with a small number of people bearing all the costs, whereas with pull fraud the costs are effectively spread across society in the form of slightly higher transaction costs and goods & services prices. There's no built-in transfer mechanism (i.e. tax) like that in push fraud because the incentive and accountability structure is radically different, notwithstanding that in the abstract it's a very simple change in who is considered the initiator of a payment.
Zelle has a limit on the amount I can transfer, especially for new contacts. And it is precisely new contacts where I need to make a big payment, latest example being the contractor to remodeled my kitchen and didn't want credit card payment for some reason.
Exactly this. Paying 3% more for credit card vs cash is a wash for me. I get 2x back by charging it to my Amex Blue Business Plus, those 2x points are easily worth more than 3% when transferring to an airline.
You just can’t admit you are wrong can you? Zelle is free, supported by almost every bank in the US - I’m sure you will find one obscure credit union in East MiddleOfNowhere South Dakota who doesn’t support it - and it’s instant
you can't just admit you don't know wtf you are talking about
checks are a valid form of payment. if you receive one you have to be able to deal with it. some checks are too large for deposit via app. as someone else pointed out, zelle has limits that make sending large payments problematic. receiving a single check is much easier.
" supported by almost every bank in the US -" thanks for proving the point though
> I can’t think of one scenario where someone would be willing to take a large paper check in 2025.
You can't think very hard then?
> You would actually accept a paper check from someone over $10K?
yes. i have and will continue to do so. what, i'm going to say no to receiving money? after depositing that check, only a fraction of it was available the next day, with the remaining becoming available 3 or 4 days later.
Zelle isn't run by the banks, it's operated by Early Warning and it's a scam service designed to harvest everyone's bank transaction history for intelligence gathering and fraud detection services
> Zelle is owned by Early Warning Services, a financial tech firm and consumer reporting agency that is co-owned by seven of the largest U.S. banks: Bank of America, Capital One, Chase, PNC, Truist, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo,
Once you are part of the banking system, everything is tracked anyway
And who actually deals with physical checks? Even the various contractors I used when preparing my home for sell took some form of electronic payment