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by 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...

1 comments

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.