this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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Mfw the rest of the world just has bank transfers
nearly every bank in the US uses Zelle which lets you send money to another persons account with no fees, just using their phone number. for some reason people just prefer to use stupid shit like venmo.
But it's a fucking 3rd party app that skims. Nothing in the USA is just straight forward. There's always someone making a buck off of your service.
Saunt Neal Stephenson predicted this and so it has come to pass.
Bruh, we have a corporation in charge of verifying your identity for OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT PURPOSES such as unemployment. (ID.me)
You have to download an app on your phone, then do a face scan, ID scan (front and back), then you might have to do a video call to an employee and have to show the documents to that person again, all that just to get unemployment. (I mean, Devil's Advocate position would be: There has been a lot of fraud regarding unemployment) But like, okay, why do just build a government-run verification system? Why are they using tax money to pay for a private corporation to di official ID verification?!?
Things are so crazy lol.
If there wasn't some bro taking a slice that'd just be communism.
I hope you're being facetious and not standing in solidarity with unfettered capitalism.
Let me guess: you stand firmly in the "/s" side.
most banks have zelle built into their own app. yeah zelle charges the bank a fee when you use it, but typically you aren't paying any, unless you use a really shitty bank.
That is like the "25$ + 5$ shipping or 30$ no shipping?" meme. You are paying for it, they just don't show it to you.
What are you talking about?
I send someone $25 on zelle, $25 is deducted from my account, and that person receives $25.
How am I paying a fee in that scenario?
Yes I know how banks work so please don't explain how they make money using my money.
The bank is "paying" the fee, but the fact that they are doing it and don't charge it back to you proves that it is well within their margin from whatever money they get out of you (account fees etc). You are paying it.
Lmao, immediately explains how banks work. Also I pay no account fees btw.
Keep everything under your mattress eh?
Nearly....but some don't. And that is the problem. Other countries have bank transfer figured out and not dependent on voluntary adoption from a 3rd party service. I was very surprised when I learned how behind the US is on banking, even compared with some "3rd word" countries.
American tourists still get upset when they can't swipe and sign the receipt, and rant about how insecure chip and tap cards are.
I am so glad I don't work retail anymore.
I get the insecure argument about tap cards (don't agree but I get it), but how could chip cards possibly be considered more insecure than swiping? That makes no sense.
from a tech-oblivious standpoint, there is no difference between the two.
...oh wait you guys didn't do swipe+pin did you
Sort of. We did, it was just never mandatory and could almost always be charged on just a swipe. We got chip and pin about 15 years ago now, but they again didn't make it mandatory, so they kept the stripe. Honestly if they just got rid of the swipe we would be fine, but not every retailer has tap to pay and not every bank does chips yet.
It's a mess. The tech is there, fucking old people and idiots keep the stripe on the cards and because of that skimmers run rampant.
I am annoyed many banks got rid of the raised numbers, at least one store I went to (less than 5 years ago) lacked internet and phone connectivity, now they have to write the numbers by hand.
Working at Walgreens the amount of fuckers with apparently tons of money needing to load their chime or cashapp is fucking insane. Like do you dumbfucks not have bank accounts.
By their appearance I am convinced its all drug addicts or drug dealers. But it is insane. I only thought cashapp was kids or I have used it for Facebook market.
It just shocks me the amount of people using these things as their main source of storing money. Like my ex who uses Paypal.
Probably not true for ALL of them but there's plenty of people who can't open bank accounts. People with bad credit/overdrafts, criminal history for fraud, undocumented immigrants, the homeless, etc
Wait, you can't open a basic chequing account with bad credit? I've never heard of this before.
It's not really credit score it's a seperate system. Basically if you ever default on a bank account then you wind up in the CHEX system and you're basically fucked for a long time when it comes to opening bank accounts. Defaulting on a bank account will put you in the CHEX system and ruin your credit score but a bad credit score alone won't put you in the CHEX system.
My mom did it in the past where she had a bank account go severely negative due to predatory overdraft fees and she abandoned the account rather than paying it. 5 years later she still couldn't open a regular checking account anywhere without having someone cosign on it.
Dude I default on a ton of banks and overdrafted like 1200 out of Avast. Even wrote hot checks in my youth ( but I quickly paid them off) I still have had no issues getting a checking account. I have three different accounts with 3 banks.
So I don't know how fuck your credit needs to be but guess I haven't hit that low yet.
Not even bad credit, some banks will debank you for a variety of arbitrary reasons. You need an address, usually have to have regular income, and have to have all of your documents at a minimum, but if you end up in CHEX for any reason (like telling a bank to fuck themselves for almost $400 in overdraft fees that were their fault in the first place) you get denied outright.
If that sounds easy and simple then congrats on your incredibly privileged and sheltered upbringing.
My father falls hard for pig butchering and romance and job scams. On top of the social engineering where he sent various people all his life savings, they also sold his account information and repeatedly drained his accounts. He noticed and reported as fraud the non-voluntary transactions (remaining impervious to all their red-flag communications on the voluntary transactions), on at least a weekly basis for like a year before the banks iced him out. I can't really blame the banks there.
It might be more like excessive overdraft fees
Banks are for profit... how can they scam you with overdraft fees if your too poor to be scammed?
And Zelle is rife with fraud.
https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2025/attorney-general-james-sues-company-behind-zelle-enabling-widespread-fraud
https://bankingjournal.aba.com/2025/09/north-carolina-federal-court-trims-zelle-fraud-class-action-against-bofa/
https://member.texasbankers.com/Magazine/Magazine/Features/2024-11/24-11-The-growing-concerns-of-Zelle-fraud.aspx
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-sues-jpmorgan-chase-bank-of-america-and-wells-fargo-for-allowing-fraud-to-fester-on-zelle/
Is it much better elsewhere with instant payments/transfers? The EU reports similar fraud issues with their instant payments systems.
With the EU, I only see instant payment regulations for enabling the payer to verify the payee
and screening of transactions for sanctions. Their payment services regulations
Zelle likewise provides payee name for verification, offers multifactor authentication, and treats payments as irrevocable, so I'm not sure what more to expect here that isn't pretty much the same elsewhere.
actual fraud or people sending money to someone they should have known better than to send money too?
What’s actual fraud?
a platform that let's someone's unique I'd change and then someone else use that same id
Huh. Why would you think this would be either necessary or sufficient for “real fraud?”
The US has bank transfers: they're usually either slow as balls (eg, standard ACH settles during business hours in 1–3 business days for ACH credit, 3–5 business days for ACH debit) or cost a fee (eg, wire transfer). Standard real-time payment common in other countries is still uncommon in the US. 20 years ago, I also wondered "why in the electronic age of the developed world is changing some ledgers still this stupid?".
Zelle operates over ACH. It achieves "instant transfers" through banking platform integrations.
Right, I'd just get their account number and sort code, and can transfer securely for free, normally immediately or at least within 2 hours if their bank also uses SWIFT, which they all do.
If I understand correctly your account number is kinda of a big deal and a security risk to share it. But I may be wrong, nothing in US banking is straightforward or makes sense.
Depends. It’s not an issue at all for European bank accounts. All you can use it for is to deposit money in my account. Pretty much every company will have their bank account number listed on their website and in their letterhead.
That is what I thought was in the US also, but it seems to not be the case.
If someone has your account and routing number they can pull money out of your account. This is literally how autopay works for your internet or credit card or whatever.
Granted doing so without authorization is fraud and the account you pull into is going to be investigated, but that's all you really need. Two numbers.
In the UK the bank account number is just a form of ID. Sort code identifies the bank and branch.
When I add a new payee, the bank runs a check to see that the name, sort code and account number match (even if it's from another bank). Even if they do match there's a pop-up warning about scams before the transfer goes ahead. Once they're on my list of payees it's just click and transfer. I do all that on my phone via my bank's app.
There's no way to "pull" money from another account purely using its number. Banking scams do exist here, but they generally rely on bamboozling people into paying money themselves, eg buying gift cards, or giving the scammers control of their phone.
You do need the person's name as well, but yeah that's just about it. It's not great.
That is what I thought, so not something you wanna do to send money to random people.
If you hand someone a check, it has those numbers on it.
Security and PII is a joke in the US. Public info started getting used as if it were private.
What year is it?!