[retornam]

Wise is near-instant it doesn't take multiple days. Even Western Union has money in minutes to over 200 countries [1].

Almost all delayed transactions are due to fraud. The delay is often implemented to protect the sender from losing funds.

How does crypto handle fraud?

[1] https://www.westernunion.com/us/en/restrictions-money-in-min...

[mattdesl]

My numbers are sourced from Wise’s own website. 1K GBP to CAD has a £5.02 fee and takes two days.

> How does crypto handle fraud?

Not every transactional system needs to adhere to the same set of antiquated and arduous AML checks and balances; which often break (either by allowing fraud to occur or incorrectly flagging and delaying valid transactions). For comparison, Cash App has no dispute mechanism:

https://cash.app/help/us/en-us/6501-sent-money-to-the-wrong-...

[wharfjumper]

I think the logical flaw is in the assumption that AML checks are a bug in traditional money transfer systems when in fact they are a government-imposed feature (largely following on from September 11 and the expanded scope of the FATF[1]). Therefore the same rules will eventually apply to cryptocurrency financial transactions negating many of the advantages that an unregulated process has when compared to a regulated one.

So the real question is: what is the technological benefit offered by decentralized ledger-type technologies versus traditional ones? The answer for many is that the technology is much worse in fundamental ways. Additionally the governance issues of a decentralized system or organization are very challenging to address.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Action_Task_Force

[mattdesl]

It’s not technically possible for a single controller (the government) to censor and prevent transactions on an individual level across the network. In other words, the antiquated AML system we use for bank transfers cannot be strapped onto crypto ad-hoc. This is either a good thing, or a bad thing, depending on who you are asking.

As to your fundamental question, the above might already hint at it: decentralization. It’s an open source spec; shared and unified across the globe, that is not in the control of any one state government or private company. Other features like near-instant settlement times, programmability, 100% uptime, privacy (ZKP), permissionless usage, minimal transaction fees (L2)—these are all practical bonuses that do improve on the status quo in today’s payment processors.

[retornam]

Link, please? I ask because I have used Wise multiple times over many years and haven't had a transaction take more than 5 minutes. I'm confident I'm not the exception.

Cash App is US only and thus doesn't apply to your initial comment. Let's stay on topic please. Thank you.

[mattdesl]

Go to Wise.com and input the currencies in the transfer box.

Reiterating what I wrote in another comment, since you seem to be viewing this solely from your own experience:

> A lot of people have a limited set of experiences, such as sending wires or Wise payments to/from a specific country, and it works well for them, without realizing there is an entire world of other scenarios outside of this scope where it is not as well suited.

And Cash App is just an example; people are happy to send money with it, despite the lack of dispute and reversibility. Many people have friends and family across the world now and would probably be fine sending money to them without strict, slow, and costly AML checks on every transaction.