[NovemberWhiskey]

>It amazes me that in 2020, we still struggle to implement a simple system where someone can reliably and permanently transfer money to someone else as the default, expected behaviour of the financial system.

It's called cash, maybe you've heard of it?

If you want an electronic system that's exactly like putting cash in an envelope and handing it to someone, Zelle etc. represent that system. A wire transfer is basically the same, only with greater formality, complexity and cost.

By and large, consumers don't actually want that. They like protections such as being able to chargeback if services they've paid for don't get delivered; goods are defective or counterfeit and so on. Yes, this can make life hard for merchants: on the other hand, they are free not to accept credit cards. Most do, because it's a price of doing business.

[Silhouette]

By and large, consumers don't actually want that. They like protections such as being able to chargeback if services they've paid for don't get delivered; goods are defective or counterfeit and so on. Yes, this can make life hard for merchants: on the other hand, they are free not to accept credit cards. Most do, because it's a price of doing business.

That's the problem. You're free not to accept credit cards, but only in the sense that you're free not to be able to actually sell anything to a large number of people in some very important markets. It shouldn't be a "price of doing business" to accept chargeback abuse, and it shouldn't be OK for the financial firms that permit chargeback abuse using their systems to wash their hands of the resulting liability. But right now, in practice, it is.