> If you send a SEPA payment in Europe (most modern standard) it still takes one business day.
The most modern standard is SEPA Instant Credit Transfer [1] which does transfers in under 10 seconds. As of right now 57% of European payment service providers have joined with this scheme.
> A normal wire transfer takes days even in europe.
That is somewhat true. Usually, a regular bank transfer does not take longer than 1-3 working days, mostly dependent on the institutions involved. Some banks take what feels like ages, some are done within 12 hours. But I have never experienced a transfer taking more than 36 hours, even internationally.
> The immidiate wire transfer exists only for a few years and costs money for initiating one for some banks.
SEPA Instant Payments we're a bit slow to roll out but are now catching up. They're now fairly widespread in terms of availability and cheap as well (the banks I have accounts at charge 50ct for an Instant Payment). Apparently there is also legislation in the works which would make instant payments the default by making them mandatory to support and capping their prices to the prices of non-instant SEPA payments [1]
If that's not supported somehow classic SEPA transfers work everywhere, and arrive in 1 business day max. 1 day isn't something you can use in a shop of course, but if you need to pay back a friend it's pretty acceptable imo.
> unacceptable (different banks)
Not accepting IBANs or SEPA payments from other banks or from banks in other EU countries is illegal, and comes with substantial fines.
It still happens in places of course, especially in slow moving large orgs, but if you still find organizations doing this nowadays then you can report them as breaching EU payment regulations (https://eba.europa.eu/consumer-corner/how-to-complain) and that should set a fire under things pretty quickly.
> was there any currency that was also a payment method?
Every currency has, by definition, native payment methods. (If it doesn't, it's a settlement system, not a currency.) Most simply: physical cash.
Electronic payment systems are more complicated. In some countries, consumers can directly access them. In others, e.g. the United States, consumers indirectly access the settling-in-seconds and costing-pennies Fedwire system through banks.
> Bank wire transfers take up to three days in Europe
Maximum settlement time for SEPA transfers has been 1 business day since 2012.
Same day transfers have been a reality for a long time (at least in The Netherlands), the fact that it takes 3 - 5 days here in the US is absolutely insane.
It's also another illustration of how backwards US payments infra is. In the EU, SEPA instant payments are just that: by law it can take a maximum of 10 seconds for the recipient to get paid, including across countries. And, of course, they're free.
At least in Europe, SEPA payments are visible abroad the next day (at least according to my experience from transferring to Germany and London from Finland), so that's not too slow.
The SEPA Instant Credit Transfer scheme introduced in 2017 introduced 10-second transfers. Not all banks are participating yet, particularly in (south-)eastern Europe, but it's a fast growing share, and in my home country (the Netherlands) just about everyone does.
with Faster Payments local transfers in the UK happen instantaneously. this has been the case for more than a decade. all banks participate and makes transferring funds in the UK a breeze.
to give you an example as to how fast this payment system is: i press pay and the money is received on the other end before the “successful transfer” screen pops-up on my device :)
for international payments i’ve noticed that it takes less time to receive money from the UK than it is for the receiving party to do a local transfer :)
SEPA payments with my bank here in Germany typically take 3 business days, not 10 seconds. Reading about it, it seems that my bank doesn't support SEPA Instant Credit Transfer!? I'm not sure if any bank here in Germany does (never looked, though).
No one here can pay for their pizza delivery through SEPA. Intermediaries like PayPal are still needed. I'm baffled that banks can't get their shit together to offer an instant payment solution that works over the internet (ie. no card reader) for small purchases.
Because banking in some couuntries actually does work like that.
In Europe, since November 2017 banks are moving towards the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer system, which allows transfers in under 10 seconds, between all banks.
So if you’re today using a European bank, your transfers might actually work like this.
> But in principle I agree. If you have a wallet set up and are used to using it, it's pretty quick and easy,
Once you've overcome all the hurdles it's quick and easy isn't exactly encouraging. I'm not going to claim that it's easy to open a bank account/get a debit card, but they're pretty close to required in the western world these days so people have already overcome that hrudle.
> and the money settles faster than ACH in the US which take at least a day if not 3-5
This is a US problem that can be solved by regulation, not a technical problem. SEPA transfers clear in seconds in the EU. If you're using a payment network like Visa or Mastercard, you don't need to wait for processing (which can be 5-10 days), you only need authorization which is normally in the order of seconds. There is an element of trust here for sure, but you're trusting your Merchant Provider, and if you don't trust them to pay you you need another Merchant Provider _anyway_.
> Setting up Stripe is something you can only do with approval from the authorities, though, so e.g. sex workers can't use it.
Coinbase requires you to go through a KYC too, meaning it's unlikely that a person who is currently unable to use an existing Merchant provider will be able to use any of the larger exchanges.
The most modern standard is SEPA Instant Credit Transfer [1] which does transfers in under 10 seconds. As of right now 57% of European payment service providers have joined with this scheme.
--
[1] https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-insta...
reply