[girvo]

What I find interesting is that I don't know anyone here in Australia that uses these payment platforms. I wonder if that's because bank-to-bank transfers are so quick and easy these days? Most of the big banks even have ways of sending _cash_ to other people, to withdraw from any of that bank's ATMs with a code and no card.

Anyway, the issue Venmo has here is similar to what banks also have to deal with: in theory you can reverse a transaction before it's cleared when sending money between accounts. That said, it's quite a bit more difficult I'd assume, and perhaps a lot of people who would otherwise be happy with scamming those out of money on third-party systems would think twice about doing so when a bank is involved. Interesting stuff, and it seems most startups who try and break into these sorts of markets have to learn all the hard lessons the big companies did years ago, which sucks for consumers. On the other hand, the incumbents are usually so slow moving and painful, I applaud those who attempt it.

[taspeotis]

> I wonder if that's because bank-to-bank transfers are so quick and easy these days?

APCA (Australian Payments Clearing Association) has been working on making real-time payments accessible for a while [1].

[1] http://www.apca.com.au/about-payments/future-of-payments/rea...

[jakobegger]

Same here in Austria. Bank transfers are free and instantaneous between customers of the same bank, and take one business day to other banks. And they are irreversible.

Nobody needs to use something like Venmo here.

[randyrand]

But how to you get their ID? Venmo uses phone numbers/facebook which is why it's so easy.

In America you need a ~20 digit account and routing number and even then Im not sure how to do it through my bank.

[jakobegger]

You use the IBAN (International Bank Account Number), which is a 20 digit number that you find on your bank card (it's similar to a credit card number).

Sure, you can't just transfer money to someone's facebook account, but I guess that the inconvenience of having to ask people for their bank account number before you can send them money isn't really that big of a deal.

Especially considering that we are used to paying everything by bank transfer. Things like rent, utilities, parking tickets... any time you get a bill, there's a bank account number on it that you need to transfer the money to. And you just pay it online using the bank's website.

(For paying recurring bills, you can also grant a company permission for "direct debit" for your account, so you don't need to do anything. It sounds risky, but I've never had any fraudulent charges on my account)