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by doomrobo 630 days ago
In Europe, this is not uncommon for online purchases. You put in your IBAN number and authorize the transaction
2 comments

Yes. In Germany there is Giropay, where you get redirected to your online banking (it remembers your bank), you have to log in, and submit the already pre-filled transaction. It's literally a normal bank transfer from the user perspective. Not something that happens on the server side.
FedNow is analogous to SWIFT, not applications like Giropay / iDEAL / wero.
Wouldn’t it be closer to SEPA? i.e. both are single currency, low cost and instant(?), effectively the opposite of SWIFT.
I don't know about the others, but Giropay just does a redirect to your online banking account and prefills the bank transfer form. The actual payment is literally the instant bank transfer solution. (I think it's called TIPS, not SWIFT.)
It's a scheme layered on top of regular SEPA bank transfers. As such, it does not work across borders, for example, and not even with all German banks.
You can also pay with SEPA directly, although not everyone supports.

However I consider that highly unsafe.

FedNow is not launching in Europe.
Instant bank transfers already exist in Europe.

> TIPS is a harmonised and standardised pan-European service with common functionalities for the settlement of Instant Payments across different countries and jurisdictions. It is based on the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) Instant Credit Transfer scheme.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/target/target-professional-us...

> In 2020, Lael Brainard announced the upcoming FedNow service would provide "a neutral platform on which the private sector can build to offer safe, efficient instant payment services to users across the country",[20] after 2018 the European Central Bank launched the TIPS instant payment settlement system.[21]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow

Unfortunately not every country in Europe. Zero banks in Ireland have implemented SEPA Instant and transfers still take at least a day. Thankfully though they have a deadline to implement this that's coming up soon and will be forced to comply.
Sometimes it can be worthwhile to see what other countries have been successfully doing for decades. It won't prevent anyone from reinventing the wheel if they still have their mind set on it :)
The culture is different and solutions will be different. Again: not super relevant here.
FedNow does look an awful lot like SEPA Instant to me (down to banks not being eager to offer it to consumers without a legal requirement).