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by Silhouette 2078 days ago
We have this system though

Are you sure? You're certainly correct that many popular payment methods are well overdue for being discontinued, but many methods of transferring money that you might think are permanent or even immediate can, under some circumstances, subsequently be reversed.

Unless you've been the victim who sent money to a scammer, of course, in which case all too often it mysteriously turns out that the method you used doesn't suffer from such a limitation. It's almost as if there's a whole dark industry of people who know which methods can be exploited like this and use it to abuse innocent people who made reasonable but incorrect assumptions about the competence and security of the financial services industry.
2 comments
jivings 2078 days ago
In the EU we have Instant Payments powered by SEPA[1], which requires banks to confirm payment is sent/received in under 10 seconds.

So yes, it's certainly available and possible, and incident of fraud is very low by all accounts.

[1]: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/integration/retail/instant_pa...

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Silhouette 2078 days ago
SEPA is certainly one of the best options for a payer-originated transfer. We have something similar here in the UK as well, the Faster Payment system.

On the other hand, SEPA Direct Debits can be involuntarily refunded up to 13 months after the payment goes through if the payer claims the charge was unauthorised. From bitter experience, some customers are quite willing to lie about a legitimate charge being unauthorised in order to take their money back retrospectively.

In the spirit of the original article here, I wonder how many people appreciate the profound difference between those two methods of transferring money, both commonly known as SEPA.

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srtjstjsj 2078 days ago
Have you ever heard of a money order or wire transfer being reversed?
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Silhouette 2078 days ago
No, I haven't. On the other hand, I don't think I've ever made a payment either way, and I'm not even sure that my bank account has the facility to do so. They're certainly no use for things like purchases in a typical online store.
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