I pull out a crisp $5 bill from my wallet and hand it directly to the other person.
I call it HumanPay.
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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The evil trinity of American excellence:
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Healthcare System
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Banking System
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Temperature Units
I didn't know just how fucked up it all was until I moved to Canada.
Also:
- Car dependency
- Tax filing companies
As an European I never understood what's wrong with Fahrenheit besides no one else using it. Unlike feet/miles/pounds there is no need to convert them to anything else so.. why?
Water freezing/boiling point being 0 and 100 is neat but nowhere near being fucked like American distance units
Check out Chicago: where you can ask for directions and 'a couple blocks' could mean 500 feet or 3/4s of a mile, depending on what part of town you're in .
I'll still take a fairly straightforward grid over the spaghetti road map that many East Coast/European cities have.
American here raised on the Fahrenheit. My rational mind knows that we should all use SI and/or metric units for everything (using Celsius over Kelvin is a pretty easy sell). And there are other units of measure like energy that depend on how big a "degree" is, so your reasoning doesn't even apply in all situations.
However, living in a temperate northern US climate where we get a full dose of all four seasons, it IS pretty damn neat that 0-100 F is basically the scale of the outdoor temperature I can expect to see in a given year. It can get colder than 0F or about -18C, but that is an insanely cold winter day. Likewise, it can get above 100F or about 38C, but that is an insanely hot summer day.
Insanely hot or cold for this area, of course. Somebody who lives in Dubai or Greenland might not think it makes so much sense.
Actually, for hot places like Dubai, a 0-50C scale for temperature extremes probably makes more sense!
edit: used to say "but that is an insanely hot winter day" which I guess IS true...
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.
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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.
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Second time I've heard about taler in two months. A new record. I'd have to look into it again, but I can say is that if it soceeds, I hope it brings gnunet with it (except gns. It sucks and doesn't make sense
Actual question: why don't Americans just transfer money using a normal baning app? I just have to open the app of my bank. Enter the IBAN, name and amount, confirm and the money will be sent pretty fast. No need for either party to use any third party app.
We don’t have IBAN. Worse, we have routing and account numbers that CAN be used for an ACH transfer but many banks are disabling this functionality on personal accounts because people kept falling for scams.
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American banks use ACH, and requires both a routing number (a bank identifier) and the account number.
But theres a reason to prefer a transaction service over direct ACH. And that is settlement time. A service like zelle, the transaction is done in real time as in the money will appear in your account within an hour. But ACH does batch settlements, and that can take up to 3 days (though its ussually a day) before the money appears in your account.
Europe manages it instantly, or in rare cases that I've never seen in under 10 seconds. Honestly, three days is sad, its 2025, do they print it and put the boxes on a plane?
They transfer nightly xml files over FTP. It’s a whole thing.
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This is madness. Im Australian banking with CBA (a popular bank) and I can send 20k to my mum's bank account at ANZ (another big bank) and she receives it in her account in 30 seconds or less.
We even have a thing called PayID which links your account deets to a mobile number or email address, and so if I go out to dinner with friends and we want to split the bill, I just tell them to PayID my mobile number and I get it within 30 seconds, no 3rd party FinTech required.
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Serious question to Americans: why don't you pay your friends in cash instead of dealing with this bullshit?
I do. It's literally the only reason I carry cash around. I'm not comfortable banking on my phone.
We don't usually work with cash. Most people I know don't carry cash at all, and it's a pain to get, since most paychecks are direct deposit. You've gotta head to an ATM or the bank, or ask for cash at checkout at the store.
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Floorp is actually my browser of choice, it’s kind of like the Vivaldi of firefox
I accidentally floorped my underwear the other day when I sneezed too hard.
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It can be paid over Poob. Poob pays it for you.
paid over Boob
At first I misread it this way, and I was like "ah yes, the world's oldest payment system"
I can see the memetic advertisement by now! "Tested with ur mom", etc.
Too bad there's never been some sort of federated infrastructure for managing monetary transactions. It would be an awesome thing if it existed, and people definitely wouldn't just naively bandwagon against it and simply call it a scam if it did.
There is, it's called SEPA instant payment, and every single bank uses it. The tiny catch is that you have to be in Europe for it.
Also called payid. Instant payment, every single bank supports it, can register your phone number, email address, business number to your account so anyone with one of the Jose details can pay you. Tiny catch is you have to be in Australia
Also called Pix. Instant payment, every single bank supports it, can register your phone number, email address, business number or get a random key to your account so anyone with one of the those details can pay you. Tiny catch is you have to be in Brazil (Btw I heard we are exporting it to other countries)
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I'm harping on my friends to set up autodeposit. There is no reason to manually accept money, just let people give you money when they want.
If you need to log in, it's because you are giving somebody money. Way harder for people to scam if that's the case for everybody.
I do like that banking apps warn you that your payment might be a scam, but the number one rule I have after 25 years in computers is that nobody reads anything. Ever.
If they've opened that app and it's a scam then they're getting scammed. No amount of scary messages is going to stop that. They think the FBI takes iTunes vouchers ffs.
You think Canada's approach is better?! TELL CARNEY. The government's push for Open Banking and increased fintechs is literally them wanting to bring in all these nonsense variant fintech apps... for reasons unknown.
Easier to just give your friend a BJ and call it even. Several if it’s a big bill.
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Just use a bank? Why all these regulation dodging strange alternatives. Most banks even do email/mobile/tap transfers these days.
My guess is that USAian banks charge stupid fees for any sort of transfer between different banks
Bank transfer wouldn't be instant. A lot of banks incorporate Zelle, so that's kind of the bank's third-party etransfer. Unless your bank is not one of the ones who has it, or you prefer to use CashApp because that's what your friends all use, etc.
cash app is only "instant" because its an internal transfer. Internal transfers within banks are generally instant and interbank is still pretty quick these days. I think its hourly.
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