[jmrm]

It's surprise me how in the US and other countries there isn't any movement like Bizum in Spain, which you can pay in stores and give or receive money with other people only interchanging a phone number linked with a bank account.

That service is maintained with practically all banks in the country, valid to use with any other person who also have an account, doesn't have any transaction or a monthly/periodical fee, can't roll back payments easily if you screw up, and some other advantages.

[vinay427]

There was a thread on HN a few days ago [1] that discussed a similar idea. The prevailing notion seems to be that the far larger number of independent banks in the US makes coordinating on this sort of system far more challenging. In my experience, countries with a lower number of banks (<20 or so?) tend to be farther ahead on systems that require first-party cooperation.

However, I wouldn't say there "isn't any movement" in the US. To clarify, what I noted above obviously doesn't preclude or justify the absence of a comparable system that supports at least a subset of US banks. Zelle may one day gain wider adoption in this fashion, and third-party approaches (such as Venmo) already handle most private transactions somewhat reasonably despite relying on ACH transfers for funding rather than first-party bank support.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30259183

[noneeeed]

There's a classic Planet Money episode all about how behind the US is with inter-bank transfers. The huge number of often small banks in the US did seem to be a very significant part of the problem. Here in the UK we have many fewer banks, which makes it possible to build out the infrastructure that allows almost instantaneous transactions (rarely more than 15 seconds). As far as I'm aware support for the Faster Payments system is universal. I think that would have been much harder if there had been a large number of small banks without the technical capability to roll out such a system.