[immibis]

It literally doesn't. And why would Europeans use venmo? That type of app arose in the USA specifically, to work around not having a convenient way to send money from one bank account to another - much like bulletproof school backpacks, it solves a uniquely American problem.

[ikt]

As an Australian we have payid to transfer free and instantly between banks instead of needing a 3rd party app but I think he's right that if you are relying on IBAN and needing to do an individual bank transfer then it's not ideal.

It should be as easy as possible to donate, imo it would be better even setting up a basic kofi or buy me a coffee account, or I see the Ukrainians using paypal all the time.

It should be a 3 click payment not a bank transfer requiring copying and pasting IBAN numbers and bank account numbers etc

To poke fun at the Germans at least they are not requesting we fax a copy of the money in :P

[masklinn]

> As an Australian we have payid to transfer free and instantly between banks

That... is what SEPA is, but built into the european banking system directly.

> I think he's right that if you are relying on IBAN and needing to do an individual bank transfer then it's not ideal.

It's not ideal that you can do a simple transfer by inputting the recipient's IBAN and an amount and be done with literally no third party involved? What?

> imo it would be better even setting up a basic kofi or buy me a coffee account, or I see the Ukrainians using paypal all the time.

You think it's easier to require setting up a third party account, adding your card to it, getting the card authorised, and doing the payment that way, with fees.

Than putting 20 digits in your own bank's application and pressing "send"?

> It should be a 3 click payment not a bank transfer requiring copying and pasting IBAN numbers and bank account numbers etc

It's a SEPA transfer, it's super common and nothing very complicated. There is no bank account number involved: the BIC is the bank's own identifier, and while it was commonly required 10 years ago it's been optional for a long time, my bank's application doesn't even have a field for that anymore.

There's a standard format for qrcode SEPA called EPC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPC_QR_code), however the amount is fixed which is not always desirable e.g.

- qrcode for a 133.70€ donation https://epc-qr.eu/?bname=CCC%20eV&iban=DE41%202001%200020%20...

- qrcode for a 13.30€ donation https://epc-qr.eu/?bname=CCC%20eV&iban=DE41%202001%200020%20...

[ikt]

> You think it's easier to require setting up a third party account, adding your card to it, getting the card authorised, and doing the payment that way, with fees.

- You don't have to setup an account

- You don't have to get the card authorised (I don't know what this means)

- Adding your card numbers in takes me 10 seconds, in the case of Paypal, it's already there so no time

- Fee's are minimal, not even worth wondering about

In terms of donation, entering in the amount to donate and clicking submit is yes, easier than going into my bank's website, bringing up the international transfer, and it's asking me for SMS confirmation that I want to do this, and I can't be bothered going further.

edit: I think maybe we are fighting the wrong battle.

You think IBAN is super easy, and maybe in Europe it is.

I'm not in Europe though and neither is the other chap, so maybe the donations are very easy in Europe but not so much out of it.

I've never done an IBAN payment in my life but I've donated thousands and thousands of dollars to loads of places all over the world without issue for years including Ukraine, this is the first time I've seen a place only accepting an IBAN donation, which feels like a friction that is not there for other places.

[immibis]

You're donating to a European place. For Ukraine they let you send money directly to the US account of the entire country of Ukraine (an account held at JPMorgan Chase by the way!! That's right, having the world's reserve currency allows American private entities to fractional-reserve entire countries) and earmark it a certain way, and the National Bank of Ukraine would figure it out. That's a highly unusual way to do things. If you want to send a payment to a specific person inside Ukraine, normally you would give their Ukrainian account number to your bank and let your bank figure it out, just like you are doing here.

This feels like an "American discovering the outside world for the first time and discovering that American systems aren't very good" moment.

[boneitis]

> You think it's easier to require setting up a third party account, adding your card to it, getting the card authorised, and doing the payment that way, with fees.

> Than putting 20 digits in your own bank's application and pressing "send"?

Posting from U.S. (and admittedly a very U.S.-centric response), but in the case of Venmo/Paypal/buymeacoffee/Patreon/gofundme, yes.

I spent another half-hour trying to go the route of Wise suggested by a sibling comment but got stuck in the KYC hurdles. I already sent them my I.D. several times, but the selfie-verification flow won't complete for me, and I'm drawing the line at choosing not to install their app. (And well, I bit the bullet and installed app. It refuses to take a clear selfie, no matter how clear the the preview is /shrug)

[masklinn]

> Posting from U.S.

Yes if you're trying to use SEPA from the US I can see that, no issue there.

But from the perspective of a very euro/german centric CCC[0], SEPA is really not complicated, and almost certainly free (I understand that a few banks still charge for those but most don't, possibly to a limit). So that's likely a blind spot of theirs: SEPA is probably the cheapest and most straightforward method for 95% of their donations or more.

Even more so as this is the central organisation, but the CCC is mostly a network of local clubs[1], so revenue to the national CCC is I assume almost entirely from the clubs shunting some of their income up

[0] if you check their front page, 1/2 to 2/3 the posts are in german, so are several of the pages

[1] https://www.ccc.de/en/regional

[immibis]

You're trying to send money internationally. It sounds like your bank doesn't want you to send money internationally. This is your problem with your bank.

I don't see why you'd need Wise for a one-off payment. Just go to the international transfer page at your bank and enter the details? Do they not have one?

[masklinn]

As they indicated at the top, it looks like their bank's international transfer feature (to the extent that it exists) is broken: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42527151

I believe this is par for the course for US banking and why so many alternate payment systems exist. And in all fairness, it does very much remind me of european banking 15-20 years ago, before the spread of smartphones and banks getting on with the program and making SEPA a (and later EPC) a baseline feature, undoubtedly prodded on by member states.

And I can understand having to translate from SEPA to SWIFT and then needing to deal with that to be less than ideal. When I had to send money to a friend outside the EU I had to go through the bank's website (not available at all from the mobile application) and to register & wait for validation of their account as beneficiary (24h delay IIRC).

At the same bank, SEPA transfers is a button on the home screen of the mobile application, and doesn't require any setup, just input the IBAN or scan the EPC and go (and god would I like more businesses to accept SEPA / use EPC instead of requiring inputting my credit card every time or going through third party payment providers)

[lmz]

It's just an IBAN. Not "IBAN numbers and bank account numbers".

[Kwpolska]

The most popular way to transfer money between friends in Poland is a BLIK-to-phone-number transfer. Those transfers are done from the banking app. I don’t need to know someone’s account number, I just need their phone number. BLIK transfers are instant, unlike regular bank transfers, which may take up to 1 business day (specifically, they are done via batch processing 3 times in a business day), and they are always free, unlike instant bank transfers (though that depends on your bank/account type).

[seba_dos1]

BLIK payments are just an interface on top of regular bank payments.

[Kwpolska]

They are an interface on top of Express Elixir, not Elixir.

[seba_dos1]

Both are an option for regular transfers.

What I meant is that in BLIK, phone number gets resolved to a bank account number and a regular (express) transfer gets made, which can be seen in your account history.