It’s the same in Canada. I had to setup direct withdrawal for a strata (condo) fee by visiting my strata’s bank with a “blank cheque” (print out of a .png from my own bank’s website, trivially forged). The teller had already set up the monthly withdrawal before I reminded her she forgot to even check my ID!

It gets worse too - once I moved and wanted the withdrawals to stop, my own bank claimed there was no way they could stop them, only the withdrawing bank could cancel it. Of course I wasn’t a signer on the strata account as I was no longer a resident, so was completely reliant on them to stop.

Legacy features doesn’t even begin cover it. Those people that keep all their money under their mattress aren’t quite as insane as you might think.

No, you can do it in New Zealand too. I’m so weirded out by it that I just pay these things manually, so have never actually filled in the form that allows it.

It is; the US banking system is a mess. Everything clears through the fed, believe it or not.

There are two things you can do, however: one is request your bank set a default ACH block, and the other is to create a sub/second account from which you do all your ACH transfers for utilities and whatnot. It's a bit of an extra hassle (unless your bank allows for scheduling automatic transfers; many do) but it assures that stuff like can't happen. I've done it for a business that took paypal payments, specifically to stop paypal from being able to yoink back funds a month or two later. Within hours of a payment coming in, I'd transfer it out of the ACH-linked account into the business's main account.

> fucking crazy

It’s true though. This was essentially the plot of “catch me if you can”.

It's a carryover from before the internet. It still exists because it's still used.

You might enjoy looking at how things were done before the internet existed, because all the stuff that you do with the internet also was done before just in a different way.

There is a similar thing in EU but it's very regulated (though all processes are very lengthy and paper-heavy) and used for paying utilities etc, not gym.