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Comment by toddmorey | Hacker News Reader

I'm happy that there's more and more effort to help people pay each other without punishing fees or needing physical currency.

But ugh... FB Pay, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Venmo, Paypal... I hate thinking I'll need so many systems connected to my bank account to send or receive money. Feels like too much complexity and risk.

I know we're fatigued on "blockchain nonsense," but I'm eager and hopeful to get to a point where there's some sort of accepted (and widely used) international standard for digital currency. The traditional banking industry has just made it too hard and too expensive to move money.

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This is one of those comments that is just so...American. I’m also an American, living in the UK, and the friction inherent in the USA banking system contributes to reverse culture shock. In pretty much any EU country I’ve been to you can pay anyone in seconds from any bank account, any amount, for free, just by knowing their account number and sort code. In the USA instead, banks spend millions trying to handle small pieces of paper (checks) with zero interest in modernising. Oh well.

Fair point that this may be a uniquely American problem, but it does point out that there's still a need for an international standard that works across the world. I'd like to be able to pay anyone worldwide without an unneeded intermediary like Facebook.

There are more and more services where you can pay in Bitcoin actually, and it works, although it's still very hard to use and the support is half-baked. Lightning network is not supported enough though, it needs more time.

I ordered a cell phone front screen from China by sending money to a strange web-site that I read about in Reddit and accepted Bitcoin and a Chinese payment system that I don't have access to, I payed with Bitcoin.

I wasn't sure if anything will arrive, but in 10 days I got a package, and the mobile service said that it was the first time they saw a replacement touch screen where the integrated fingerprint reader works as well.

(for the record the web site is http://www.dragon-tt.com )

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