Here in Canada, I can do an email money transfer to virtually any financial institution. All the recipient needs to do is bank with one that supports it and use online banking.
I don't know how innovative it is, but it works relatively well.
Yes, Canada is ahead. On the other hand that email money transfer incurs a transaction fee from most banks.
What pisses me off is that we have a nearly ubiquitous way to send money in the physical world--a cheque. Yet, in the digital world we stumble to achieve the same.
I blame the profit driven corporations as each solution incurs a transaction fee and/or a proprietary solution with no interop with other systems.
My experience doing B2B money transfers: For those out of country I paid a $25-50 fee to do a wire transfer. Meanwhile bank transfers within Canada required a cash withdrawal (or bank draft), followed by a trip to the other bank to perform the deposit. Sigh.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the transaction fee either.
My bank allows me to set up personal payees, though I have to go into a branch to do it. It acts just like a bill payment, which I get for free. The downside is that it takes a day (if the recipient is at the same bank) or more (if they're not at the same bank).
The plus side on the email transfer is that it is virtually instant (~5 minutes usually).
I'll be staying in BC for a while this year. It's the first time I've seriously looked at Bitcoin to transfer money from Australia. The problem I have is the fees are from both sides - the Australian bank and the Canadian one.
I would feel a lot better about using email transfers if my bank had better security than my bloody smartphone, but as it stands my pin can't be any more complex than the pin to my smartphone. Canadian banking security is embarrassing, though I understand its not much better elsewhere.
What pisses me off is that we have a nearly ubiquitous way to send money in the physical world--a cheque. Yet, in the digital world we stumble to achieve the same.
I blame the profit driven corporations as each solution incurs a transaction fee and/or a proprietary solution with no interop with other systems.
My experience doing B2B money transfers: For those out of country I paid a $25-50 fee to do a wire transfer. Meanwhile bank transfers within Canada required a cash withdrawal (or bank draft), followed by a trip to the other bank to perform the deposit. Sigh.