> Only real friction is I can only move $10k at a time every N (4?) days.
The amount of bullshit that you Americans put up with in banking on a daily basis is mindboggling for me as an European. A bank that couldn't give me all my funds in one day would never see my business again and yield themselves a complaint at the regulatory agency.
Your first sentence is 110% correct (as an Anglo-American). It is embarrassing for me to see the ease (and speed) with which my brother & stepfather (UK banking) move money around.
The second sentence is not 100% correct, though. The limit is not on accessing your funds in general, but specifically on using the ACH to move funds to a different institution. In practice, of course, in an era of online banking, it's almost the same thing - I mean, what else were you going to do with all your funds anyway?
Are transfers that take like a day or two that inconveniencing cause instantaneous transfers would only benefit me in getting a tiny bit more interest for that extra day or two i could get interest on it? With how low interest rates are these days, that basically makes it useless for me.
If your money goes to the wrong routing or account number, can they fix that (literally happened to me where money got sent to the wrong routing number and I went to a chase branch and explained what happened and they fixed it)?
What other bullshit do you perceive we have? Granted, I only use my bank for my automatic income direct deposits, my auto loan which automatically gets pulled from my checking account, automatically paying my rent, automatically paying off all of my credit cards in full, and very occasionally using an atm to pull money out of my checking account. That's it and i literally don't use a bank for anything else which could explain some of the disparity as I've read you guys actually use your bank more often as you guys use cash and debit cards a lot more. I check it just a few times a month to see what the balance is and then occasionally siphon off any income surpluses to vanguard who holds all of my savings and investments and they are awesome.
> Are transfers that take like a day or two that inconveniencing cause instantaneous transfers would only benefit me in getting a tiny bit more interest for that extra day or two i could get interest on it?
Waiting in the case of a reasonable savings fund of 100k for way over a month (10k every 4 days in the example I replied to) to be transferred sucks.
> With how low interest rates are these days, that basically makes it useless for me.
It's not about the interest rates, rather a "peace of mind" thing. I am used to clicking a button in online banking and know that the recipient will have the money, and all of it, in maximum 2 banking days and I don't have to spend mental energy on tracking it, worrying about a physical check being held up or lost in postal service, the recipient taking his sweet time to cash the check...
> If your money goes to the wrong routing or account number, can they fix that (literally happened to me where money got sent to the wrong routing number and I went to a chase branch and explained what happened and they fixed it)?
IBAN prevents this by having a two-digit checksum, that catches 99% of typos, number swaps and other entry errors. If you still manage to mess up, you have a ten day window for a recall. Direct debits can be reversed for eight weeks.
> What other bullshit do you perceive we have?
Still using physical checks with all their downsides. Direct debit being insecure to the point that someone getting your account data (or card swipe) can raid your bank account with the money being tied up for weeks (SEPA direct debit reversal is instantaneous and fully returns the funds). CC "rewards" cost being placed on the merchants (thus raising the CC costs for all customers) instead of being capped like in the EU. Did I already mention physical checks?
> Waiting in the case of a reasonable savings fund of 100k for way over a month (10k every 4 days in the example I replied to) to be transferred sucks.
That 10k limit is for one shitty company. I don't have those limits because I don't use a shitty company. Does europe not have shitty companies? Different class of shitty, but weren't people unable to access their funds in wirecard because it essentially imploded due to fraud?
> It's not about the interest rates, rather a "peace of mind" thing. I am used to clicking a button in online banking and know that the recipient will have the money, and all of it, in maximum 2 banking days and I don't have to spend mental energy on tracking it, worrying about a physical check being held up or lost in postal service, the recipient taking his sweet time to cash the check...
Maybe other people are different, but I've never experienced a lack of "peace of mind" with any transfer. Every transfer I have done is instantaneous in that both the sending account and receiving account acknowledge the transfer and just put it in a pending status for a day and no transfer I have ever done has failed so whats the big deal?
> IBAN prevents this by having a two-digit checksum, that catches 99% of typos, number swaps and other entry errors. If you still manage to mess up, you have a ten day window for a recall. Direct debits can be reversed for eight weeks.
Interesting, not sure how that works but it does sound a lot nicer than the routing and account numbers we have here.
> Still using physical checks with all their downsides.
I have literally never written a check in my life. Granted, I know older people who still use them but I have no need for them whatsoever so who cares? I pay all my bills digitally and I can venmo friends cash digitally too.
> Direct debit being insecure to the point that someone getting your account data (or card swipe) can raid your bank account with the money being tied up for weeks (SEPA direct debit reversal is instantaneous and fully returns the funds).
I don't think I use that.
> CC "rewards" cost being placed on the merchants (thus raising the CC costs for all customers) instead of being capped like in the EU.
Credit card fees I can basically get entirely back through the reward with a single credit card. Could it be more fare with capped fees, sure and I'd support that policy. As a consumer, I don't care though.
The amount of bullshit that you Americans put up with in banking on a daily basis is mindboggling for me as an European. A bank that couldn't give me all my funds in one day would never see my business again and yield themselves a complaint at the regulatory agency.