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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

If someone knocked on your door, claimed they were from The Electric Company, asked you for $350 cash, and you gave it to them, would you say “fuck cash”?

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When was the last time you pulled out a stack of $20s and had to wait 48 hours for them to become valid?

Cash doesn't try to rationalize all sorts of slow, obnoxious, and expensive behavior on the basis of fraud protection and then fail to protect from fraud. There's obviously a tradeoff here, the problem is getting stuck with the ass end of both sides. I can't really speak to Zelle, but it's definitely true for ACH and wire transfers.

> Cash doesn't try to rationalize all sorts of slow, obnoxious, and expensive behavior on the basis of fraud protection and then fail to protect from fraud.

Neither does Zelle.

> When was the last time you pulled out a stack of $20s and had to wait 48 hours for them to become valid?

Never, but I have also never had that problem with Zelle in probably hundreds of times using it in over a decade.

But I also have never been given counterfeit money via Zelle, which I have been given via cash.

Both mechanisms of transferring money seem to be working pretty well, and both have drawbacks/benefits.

Like I said, I can't speak to Zelle, but I can absolutely speak to wire and ACH and they both have these problems in spades. When I hear that Zelle has the same problems, I believe. When I hear that it's perfect, I doubt, but "works for me" is not strong evidence even if true.

> in over a decade.

Wasn't Zelle introduced in 2017?

No, it was renamed then maybe. It was around as ClearXchange for a while, and some banks had their own names for it, even though it was all the same thing.

Check the history section here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelle_(payment_service)

Interesting, thanks!

Technically not Zelle itself, but my bank would not allow me to pay my landlord through Zelle on the basis of fraud prevention (other people at the same bank as them are fine) or send over $1000 per day (this does sort of protect a little, but it also makes it much less useful).

Zelle is one of those services that sounds good in theory but when you actually try using it you realize that the real life use-cases are very near nil.

"You can send money directly! *"

* If you have a pre-established out-of-band trust relationship and dispute resolution system with the person you're sending it to.

Which basically means you can send money to friends and family and that's about it. But you can also do that with Venmo or CashApp. Any online transaction among strangers that uses Zelle is 100% a scam. Full stop. There's a reason that groups that sell things plaster in giant bold letters to use PayPal G&S.

By far the biggest value-adds of Zelle existing is making it really obvious who the scammers are.

> Which basically means you can send money to friends and family and that's about it.

Exactly, and that is how I have used it for 10+ years.

> But you can also do that with Venmo or CashApp.

I could, but then I have trust an additional party (PayPal or CashApp) with access to my money and accounts. This is another risk with no gain.

Ya know what, fair. That's a more sensitive risk profile than I operate under and Zelle is 3rd party to my bank but if you bank with one of the major national banks I can see that providing some comfort.

Zelle is not exactly 3rd party since it is operated by a company that all the big banks themselves own (and assuming you have an account at one of the big banks):

https://www.earlywarning.com/about

> Introduced the Early Warning brand and became wholly bank-owned.

https://www.investopedia.com/what-is-early-warning-services-...

> Seven major U.S. banks own Early Warning Services: Bank of America, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, Truist, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo.

It's not actually that sensitive a risk profile -- Paypal has shown itself to be untrustworthy with how it'll just freeze an account that you have a bunch of money in or explicitly suck extra money out of your bank account or with the updated terms of service last year that they "backed down on" only slightly. Paypal also owns Venmo, so I won't touch that one. Not sure about CashApp, but I only see it listed by sketchy people and instagram influencers, so I've never considered it trustworthy to begin with. At least Zelle was part of the services provided by my bank (Chase)? Clearly it's worse than that initial impression in practice, but I'm not sure that it's really worse than Paypal or CashApp?

I can get money in my kids bank accounts within minutes, with no fees, all from my banking app and without giving access to my money to some other shady techbro company. Seems like a pretty great use case and one I use every month.

Zelle is an electronic replacement for checks. It is literally a frontend to ACH (with extra security holes). That's its intended use case.

I'd tell them to take a hike. Don't come to my door asking for hard cash. IDGAF who you are.

I mean; yes. I definitely use "Accept Credit Card" as a gate keeper in many situations because cash only transactions are sketchy.

And similarly, I feel sketcky carrying large amounts of bills on me, for say buying a car - I'll go to the bank and get a bank check over having that much cash on me.

If you had cash, they would rob you for it, but since, it's digital payments and most people don't carry cash, it not economically or practical for fraudsters to steal cash.

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