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Comment by c4urself | Hacker News Reader

Just moved to the Bay Area from the Netherlands and I feel like I took a few steps back in time when I received _checks_!? from the bank I signed up to here.

People pay each other through bank transfer in the Netherlands and can expect to receive the money on the same day (if sent before noon). On top of that it doesn't cost money to do a transfer.

I've already gone to a bank more often here than I would in the Netherlands in a whole year. Setting up recurring transfers for example, or transferring to someone in another state is just difficult via online.

In other words: there is definitely room for improvement here, America has been held back in banking

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As an American who has lived and banked in the Netherlands in the past, I couldn't agree more.

I loved the free transfers and how easy it was to send someone money. The efficiency of Dutch banking left me in awe. I remember specifically a banker telling me while I was opening an account: "Oh, and we don't use checks here. We like it that way"

"Random readers" are pretty awesome as well. I kept mine after I moved away.

America needs to catch up.

This is the standard way of operation in Germany, too. Like many other things in the U.S., we're about 30 years behind Europe. (That would explain why I'm wearing leg warmers today, too. ;)

I'm in the UK, currently I have one cheque based transaction a year (paying for the maintenance of our shared gardens) and one cash transaction a month (getting my hair cut).

It feels very odd going to the US where you have to sign with a pen when paying by card (rather than chip-n-pin).

And I feel the pain of this system when I travel to the UK. I live in Belfast 1/3 of the year and there isn't a single American bank that will issue me a chip-n-pin card. I haven't investigated how hard it would be to set up a UK credit card. Large stores usually accept American cards but I've had many smaller shops tell me they can't do a swipe anymore.

My experience visiting the UK from the USA was that everywhere would accept a swipe transaction, but that the staff didn't necessarily know how to do it (many were too young to have ever had direct experience of swiping a credit card).

The two things that helped were 1) being patient, and 2) carrying a pen.

The thing that didn't help was having a British accent and an American credit card...

There are a couple options now. See http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credit-card-programs/1304271-.... Also note that any shop which displays Visa/Mastercard symbols are required to accept swipes - if they say they can't, they're just being lazy.

Wow thank you! This is an awesome resource.

I've noticed a chain of grocery stores in my area installed new card readers recently which appear to have a slot above the LCD screen. What I haven't figured out yet is whether or not that slot is aesthetic or a chip-and-PIN reader.

I have a Wells Fargo credit card that has a chip in it, I just haven't bothered to try yet.

Has anyone else seen these readers?

It feels very odd going to the US where you have to sign with a pen when paying by card (rather than chip-n-pin).

The fun part is that that signature doesn't seem to do anything. It used to be that occasionally the cashier would check it against the signature on the back of the card (years ago), but now they never do that. They seem to have stopped asking to see my ID in the last few months as well... so now I can just swipe my card (or presumably someone else's card that I "found") and draw a smiley face on the signature pad, and that's it.

Reminded me of: http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit/

Totally.

Recently, an engineer I work with (I work for Simple) asked if we could add an image of the signature to transaction metadata in our web and mobile applications. I thought it was a neat idea, so I started asking around, but was dismayed when I found out that the whereabouts of electronic signatures was completely unclear.

Can any network or point-of-sales people tell me if the signature is being transmitted? Stored? Analyzed?

The signed reciepts are stored; and in case of a chargeback or transaction dispute the merchant has to provide them. Only then they are analyzed, but in practice it doesn't matter, any scrawl is considered as good as another. The only case where I have seen signature analysis being actually useful was a case where the customer was attempting to defraud the bank/merchant - claimed a stolen card but actually bought the stuff himself. But that is very rare compared to real stolen or skimmed cards, where signatures are pretty much useless in fraud prevention or shifting liability to someone else.

What are random readers?

They are authentication tokens -- put your debit card in and it generates a login code after you input your PIN instead of using a password --.

Info: https://www.abnamro.nl/en/prive/slimbankieren/edentifier2/ve...

Picture: http://www.abnamro.nl/en/prive/slimbankieren/edentifier2/vis...

They do two-factor authentication: you put in a passphrase and/or a debit card and it generates a token that you enter on your bank's website before you can make a transaction. The purpose is to make it impossible for somebody who has installed a keylogger on your computer to transfer money from your account by using your password. Other banks use your mobile phone: they send an SMS with a token to your phone, which you enter on their website.

A problem with them is that somebody can install a program on your computer that intercepts the code you enter, and then makes a different transaction than the one you intended to make. In this sense SMS based tokens are safer, because the banks send the amount of money and the recipient in the SMS along with the code. If a program was installed that changed the recipient and/or the amount, you'd be able to detect this in the SMS because then the SMS would display the wrong recipient and/or amount. On the other hand, your smartphone can nowadays be infected too, which those key generators cannot be...

Ah, right. In the UK they have the ones that read the credit card, in Greece we have simple number generators. Every bank uses them, though (I didn't know what they were called, we call them "tokens").

I don't know how it works in the US, but in other countries I've seen also something that's pretty inconvenient: you have to manually pay your utilities every month (water, electricity, etc) instead of the charge being done into your account automatically every month. If there is a problem and you don't agree with the bill (99.99% of the times you don't), just complain to the company and if necessary, they'll reimburse you.

"just complain to the company and if necessary, they'll reimburse you."

This is exactly why I don't do auto payments. Would you rather fight to get your money back from a utility bill mess up, or refuse to pay it before it is fixed?

If you don't get anywhere with the company, or just don't feel like talking them, you complain to your bank. I had to do this recently. It took all of 3 minutes to get my money back with no questions asked other than "did you authorise it?" and to get a block put on my account to stop that company ever taking money again.

This costs the company money and a lot of paperwork, so the threat of doing it is often enough to get them to sort themselves out.

That's generally not how automatic debit payments work in the US.

Too: even when getting a direct deposit authorization for an account, you are almost always (US) also allowing withdrawals from your account, in the event the depositor claims they made a deposit in error.

Increasingly, banks seem less secure and more porous when it comes to holding my money.

I would (and do) vastly prefer to optimize for the common case. The chance that someday I might have to dispute a bill I already paid for is totally worth not dicking around with bills every month.

You don't have to fight. You just say "I don't like that particular debit" in the internetbank or by phone, and the bank is required (by law) to credit you back; and then the (angry) utility company can try to deal with you.

I don't pay any bills manually; all of them (utilities/heating/electricity, mobile, internet, kindergarten, insurance, creditcard invoice) happen automagically - I just review online how much was paid and how much I have left :)

In my bank, your bills go to your bank, but you have to log in to click and pay them. You have the option of setting up auto-approval, but if you'd rather review all of your bills, this is the default.

I typically spend about 1 minute per month paying bills.

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