In Finland, and I imagine in most of Europe in general, people just make bank transfers for most of those things. Unlike in USA you cannot just pull cash from someone's account if you know their bank account number, you need to setup SEPA Direct Debit to do that and it requires explicit authorization from the account owner. It isn't even really used much in Finland, most companies just send electronic invoices that you can setup autopay for in your bank. They aren't free for companies but the cost is negligible (likely less than the postage stamp would cost).
Unlike in USA you cannot just pull cash from someone's account if you know their bank account number
People say things like this as if the money taken in a fraudulent transaction just disappears and is untraceable, and unrecoverable. That is false.
It's one of those scare tactics that the middlemen use to sell a vision of financial-techno-secure-utopianism in order to collect a percentage of the money. Don't fall for the marketing.
The money has to go somewhere: Into another bank account, usually, which is easily traceable since banks by law have to know who they're dealing with.
Even if a check gets cashed at a check cashing store, the store requires ID, the person getting the money is on video, sometimes they have their fingerprints taken by the store, and if something still goes wrong, the store is on the hook for the money when the transaction is reported as fraudulent and reversed.
These are all problems that were largely solved last century.
> The money has to go somewhere: Into another bank account, usually, which is easily traceable since banks by law have to know who they're dealing with.
Yes but you actually need to notice that it happened which requires them to actively monitor their transactions on all of their accounts. They then need to use their own time to report these transactions and wait for banks to resolve it. And that's just in the good case where bank doesn't dispute it. If they do, you now need to file official complaint with regulators or sue them. Former can probably be done by highly educated people by themselves (others likely need some legal help), in latter case you are going to need a lawyer. I'm not even sure if you are eligible to recover costs for those.
Why is this better than just not allowing pulls without explicit authorization by the consumer (SEPA Direct Debit) or just asking consumer to actually send the funds (bank transfer)?
> Do they not have account alerts in your country? Any time any of my balances change, I get an immediate push notification.
Just to be clear, I currently live in the US. In Finland some banks offer email/SMS notifications but they often have fees associated with them.
Frequent notifications can create notification fatigue and that's not really great either as I'm sure anyone who gets false positive alerts from monitoring system knows.
One of the many surprising things on that list is that paperboys still exist!
I thought printed papers were all but dead even in the US and can't recall the last time I saw a stand or store where I could buy one. They faded away unceremoniously, like phone booths.
That there is enough money in it to motivate kids to get up in the morning still today I would never have guessed.
Also astonishing are the size and presence of the various fees! Around here a 5 dollar fee for invoicing is the highest I've seen, and it raises eyebrows even among the Mercedes/BMW crowd because everyone knows it doesn't cover any actual additional costs, so it's basically a scam. A way for companies to say "interest free" while still collecting interest.
I thought printed papers were all but dead even in the US
In its last financial statement, the New York Times reported 600,000 print subscribers. (Plus something like 20 million paid online subs.)
Newsstands are mostly gone (though there are a few), but my experience over the last few years is that outside of tourist areas, print newspapers are available at most chain drug stores, book stores, and some gas stations. The more urban you are, the more likely you are to find them. They also remain popular in ethnic communities. I recently picked up a monthly printed newspaper in Japanese that is distributed in the DC area.
I can think of five places with six blocks of me that sell newspapers (two drug stores, two bodegas, and a bookstore).
The latest Superman movie even did a PR stunt where the movie company printed up thousands of Gotham newspapers with Superman headlines and distributed them to newspaper racks. I saw them at Walgreens.
- ? You pay your employer what you were paid for jury service? Bank transfer I guess, but also probably illegal
- would likely be deducted on payslip (because tax & accounting implications of below market value gift) or via a third-party that would most likely accept card
> ? You pay your employer what you were paid for jury service? Bank transfer I guess, but also probably illegal
That happens when you are salaried and your company pays you your normal salary for the time you are in jury duty. They already paid for your time, they are entitled to the (generally much lower) compensation that the state pays you.
Oh I see. It's kind of just reversed here then - it's not paid, but if your employer doesn't pay you (i.e. gives you unpaid time off for it) then you can claim capped loss of earnings.
Seems like it would be easier in US case just to reduce pay though, time off at 80% or whatever rather than full and then request it paid back...
most of these are related to the high credit card fees we have in the US to support the card points programs. in EU for example, the fees are 10% of ours.
> Charitable donations because charities maximize every penny, and electronic contributions eat into that
Charities in Europe very much want an electronic donation, since the cost is far less than handling either cash or cheques. More importantly (I think), it also gives them much more opportunity to get a recurring donation.
Example UK prices (since cheques still exist there)
I'm in Sweden and the only time I've ever come in contact with a check was when an American company sent me one as a refund.
Most of these reasons just sound like fee-issues to me. I use a debit card (or Swish) to pay for everything and there's never a cheaper payment option. The fact that checks somehow cost less to use than debit/credit cards sounds ridiculous tbh, especially with all the added handling that must go into dealing with them (it just seems so inefficient).
My company claims that allowing me to have both my regular pay and the government pay would be considered an over-payment, and the accountants say it triggers all kinds of messy things.
However, at the same time, it is illegal to do this in some American states where we have offices. So it must somehow be possible for the accountants to allow it.
I served on a jury for a week a few years ago and my check at the end was $22. It seems like it wouldn't be worth the company's time to handle and process that check.
I'm sure some jurors got more. My county's jury pay/reimbursement is primarily mileage based and I live 2 miles from the court house.
Given how badly jury duty pays, it seems a wasted effort.
It seems to vary from county to county. When I served, we were given a pamphlet stating that the rate had recently been raised.
I don't remember the exact figure, but it was well above minimum wage. Something like $80 for the first and last day, plus $120 for each day between, plus transportation costs.
Far less than what I make as a super cool tech dev bro, but I can see it taking a lot of the pain away for the average person.
The state made me forego the (grand - for a month) jury duty pay due to being on salary.
However, I still got compensated for daily public transport to the courthouse - which wasn't taxable.
If the "check"/offline payment bounces, I wonder if it's the merchant that is out the money? Or is there any assurance from anyone else, like maybe the network would go halfsies?
Edit: on second thought, that doesn't really make sense and would be a great way to defraud the network of a ton of guaranteed money
I would love it if this were the solution, embossed card imprinters can work without internet and power and are both fast and intuitive. It worked as a primary method in the past, it can work as a backup method in the future.
atleast with cheques tho there was a way to safeguard the payments of a cheques by crossing of cheques and when I had learnt about cheques there were a lot of things that can be done via cheques like endorsing etc.
But there was always a risk of cheques being unsafe so that's why there is bank drafts. It seems that this is more similar to bank drafts than cheques.
If you really try to sum it up, I know I am going to do a grave misjustice but even a cash could be thought of a cheque from the govt. (well a cheque is meant to be unconditional but its based on the banking laws of a govt. and cash is a promissory note which is a promise made by the govt. so yeah....)
As another HN commenter pointed out here,this decision might be partially due to swedish culture of how they view cash which you can find here.
