Yes. U.S. is way behind in banking tech. Even in poorer countries like many of those in latam, you can easily do direct bank transfers. It's pretty common to see e.g. street vendors with QR codes that you can scan to send money directly without the need for a non-bank intermediary.
I'm not sure that it's entirely that the US is behind, it's that they introduced credit cards so early that they've ended up with those dominating the space.
And now because of that, there's lobbying against direct bank transfers and capping of interchange fees.
That explanation makes sense to me, but I'd still consider it accurate to say that the U.S. is behind in this regard since credit cards are pretty ubiquitous in most of those countries as well.
True, but that's a lot more recent than US use of credit cards. Like, up till about 10 years ago most Irish consumers had non visa/mc debit cards and credit cards were rarer (mostly those Maestro debits).
I mean, the US should definitely improve their bank2bank stuff and implement FedNow (I think that's what it's called) but there's less pressure to do so as basically everyone has and accepts credit cards (not true in lots of Western Europe).
yes kinda, it's complicated (as in depends on country and in some countries is still can involve a 3rd party "middleman" even through you do auth with your bank and don't need an account with the middle man)
through what matters is that in the end you can pay on most EU sites without having either paypal or a credit card
so that use case really doesn't need paypal
and for the p2p money sending you need it even less
and if you buy stuff from outside of the EU you most times can pay with both paypal or credit card, so if you have a credit card you don't need paypal for that either
Umm, yes? Not sure about the rest of Europe, but here in Czechia most of merchants have a direct payment method based on QR code.
Basically: 1) you select your bank at the checkout; 2) you're redirected to the bank's payment page with a QR code; 3) you scan the code from your banking app and confirm it; 4) the bank redirects back the merchants page with the payment status confirmed/declined. No payment processor involved and the money goes straight from your account to merchant's account.
Because it’s directly related - the US’ political strategy is why PayPal exists. Politics is inseparable from economics.
We prioritize the private sector politically and there’s a lot of benefits, and a lot of detriments, to this.
One of the downsides is we have hundreds of more or less identical companies doing the same thing that don’t need to exist. This breeds inefficiency into systems we use, thereby opening the door for even more useless companies that just reduce friction. Friction that we decided we needed to have.
The most obvious example is healthcare in the US, but every industry experiences these detriments.
Edit: Then why did you put a question mark at the end of a statement of fact instead of a period? What he said was true, has been true for a long time in fact (not just Europe, but a lot of the rest of the world), and you can easily google for evidence if you don't believe him, without questioning his honesty. Were you honestly that surprised that you had to ask?
The US lags so far behind other so-called "third world countries" not only in banking, but also health care, freedom from gun violence and school shootings, and now also civil rights and freedom of speech and democracy. I don't think Canada or Greenland would vote to give up their advantages and freedoms to become US states, but if they did, they sure wouldn't vote for the current administration.
I didn't think anyone was lying. Not sure what you mean by that. I was wondering if what they were saying included that aspect specifically or not.
I am not even sure why you were putting words like shocking, surprised, skeptical seemingly into my response. None of these are accurate descriptions of my question and response.
Yes, at least in Poland. You can either use Blik (mobile payments integrated with your bank account) or get redirected to your bank website for fast wire transfer.