[yardie]

I don’t buy this argument at all. The EU is 500mm people across 24 different countries, speaking many languages, and I had no problem paying and receiving money from anyone in any of those countries.

US banking is a decrepit mess because the treasury allows it to be.

[xienze]

> and I had no problem paying and receiving money from anyone in any of those countries.

And no one in the US has problems sending and receiving money from anyone else in the US either...

The parent's point is that legacy systems still exist in the US, as I'm sure they do in the EU. That doesn't mean that getting paid by a paper check is particularly common for regular workers. The vast majority of people are paid electronically. No one likes dealing with checks and for the most part no one really has to. The only times I ever do that is when I'm paying a contractor many thousands of dollars for e.g., work on my house. Usually those guys are older and self-employed, and either don't know how to accept money electronically or don't want to because of fees (and I don't blame them). In those instances I get a cashier's check made. That's the only time I have to deal with it.

There are of course instances where an employer might not provide direct deposit because they find the added expense too much to bear (as another poster pointed out). We're not living 50 years in the past, as you might imagine. Checks are not particularly common.

[Tuna-Fish]

> The parent's point is that legacy systems still exist in the US, as I'm sure they do in the EU.

And the actual point is that no, they don't, they were cleared away because their existence is a pox on everyone.

Having seen both systems upclose, for the average consumer the European banking system is about a hundred years in the future from the American one, which is a steaming hot cesspit of legacy systems and banking institutions that spend all their time figuring out ways to milk more money out of consumers.

Case in point:

> or don't want to because of fees

It's not okay to charge people fees to send or receive money.

(Technically, European banks still can do that, but since the EU has forced all banks to accept transfers from each other using a common system, and that all money transfer are executed as "shared fees" where the sender pays the fee to their institution and the receiver pays the fee to theirs, free and open competition has driven the price of sending and receiving money to 0€.)

[xienze]

> And the actual point is that no, they don't, they were cleared away because their existence is a pox on everyone.

You’re telling me checks don’t exist in the EU anymore? Forgive me for being skeptical.

> where the sender pays the fee to their institution and the receiver pays the fee to theirs, free and open competition has driven the price of sending and receiving money to 0€.)

You’re gonna have to elaborate, because that sounds like both parties pay money to perform an exchange, which is even worse than what we have, where one party does.

Are you saying that if I wanted to pay someone $100 I have to cough up an additional $5 and the receiving party has to pay $5 to get their $100? In what way is that “no fees” unless the receiving party is reimbursing the paying party directly? Unless I’m missing something here, a transfer of $100 cost $110 under this system.

[Tuna-Fish]

> Are you saying that if I wanted to pay someone $100 I have to cough up an additional $5 and the receiving party has to pay $5 to get their $100? In what way is that “no fees” unless the receiving party is reimbursing the paying party directly? Unless I’m missing something here, a transfer of $100 cost $110 under this system.

You pay the fee to your banking organization, which is 0€. The receiver pays the fee to their banking organization, which is also 0€.

Or in other words, there are no fees.

The idea being that the EU has made it very easy to switch banks, and forced a regime where a customer can freely pick the bank that has the lowest fees, which lead to a situation where no bank that wants to retain customers can bill them for transferring money.

[hocuspocus]

> You’re telling me checks don’t exist in the EU anymore? Forgive me for being skeptical.

They still exist in a couple countries but have completely disappeared in most. When wire transfers are free to consumers and cost cents to business account holders, why would anyone use something else?

[rags2riches]

I just did a Google search for caching checks in my native language. All the top hits were for forum posts on the theme "I just got a check from the US, how do I deposit it?" I suppose I could deposit a check with some hassle. If I really wanted to, I also suspect I could figure out out to write a check. But I really doubt I could find anyone who would accept it. I am also certain there is no way I could deposit it without it being cleared first. The check float thing still boggles my mind.

[PeterisP]

Yes, in most EU countries checks are nearly nonexistent, and a large portion of population have never ever seen (much less used) a check even once in their life, it's something you read about in literature and hear mentioned in American media. IIRC they're quite popular in United Kingdom still, though.

I worked in a bank for a bunch of years, a decade ago we were processing <100 checks a year, which was an unusual (and expensive) service; about half of the checks was companies doing international sales to unusual countries and the other half was scams; so that business was shut down - some banks do offer a service of cashing checks, but many banks will not.

A wire transfer to an account in another banks is (depending on your bank) either free or something like 0.15-0.30 eur, certainly cheaper than a stamp if one would need to send a paper check.