eTransfer in Canada is pretty simple, no big hassle. Send to an email or phone number. If they too have eTransfer configured (or when they do) they can use the email to accept a transfer… or deposits happen automatically if that’s how eTransfer is configured.
But eTransfer only works when I’m logged in to my bank via web or app. If a hacker can login to your bank as you then really, at that point there’s no limits. (although apparently I need the assistance of a money manager to move things from my mutual fund retirement savings etc. to actual cash accounts, and there are limits where the transactions have to be verified by a person before they go through, etc.)
Yep. I sell on eBay to fund a hobby. I opened an online checking account separate from my personal funds - eBay is the only thing that account is used for. It’s worked fine and I get my money quicker than I used to under the old system.
I don’t keep more than about $100 in there at any time; as soon as it goes over that I transfer the funds to my regular account as a one-time transfer so that I don’t have to have my personal account information linked. So if someone ever compromised the eBay account they wouldn’t get more than a pittance.
I would share the OP’s reluctance to give bank information to eBay, and I agree that a special or “sacrificial account” set up for just that purpose is the better way to do it.
For similar reasons I dislike automatic debits (autopay) from either a bank account or credit card. This is mostly on the general principle that I want proactive control over payments. I’ve only authorized automatic payments when there’s been a compelling reason to do so. Home and auto insurance is automatically paid out of my bank account because I can’t risk having a policy lapse due to my scatterbrained tendency to forget things, and my cell phone provider automatically bills a credit card just because their billing notices are in the form of text messages that are easy to forget.
No, and realistically there’s no comparison in terms of the relationship and risk levels involved with any of my employers, especially given eBay’s less than totally scrupulous history and the difficulty of contacting an actual human to resolve disputes.
eBay may well be more ethical than I give them credit for, and many of their annoying policies are undoubtedly just defenses against a largely untrustworthy world, but my subjective view is that eBay not an entity to which I’d want to give open access to a primary bank account.
The other reservations I expressed were around automatic withdrawal rights (autopay). Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I prefer to directly control the payment of my own bills.
That, I can understand. But that’s a separate issue from giving someone deposit access. (And, as noted, anyone I’ve ever given a check to has access to my bank account number and routing number, so it can’t be that risky to give those out.)
An important question here that I don’t have the answer to – and the answer may vary by jurisdiction – is whether deposit access also gives the entity some degree of withdrawal access, and to what degree. For instance, if an eBay transaction involves a purchase by a scammer who then demands a refund, can eBay reach into your account and recover a payment they previously deposited? If so, then eBay could also do it entirely by mistake, or due to a security breach.
Yes, eBay can (and does) withdraw funds. They state that quite clearly - they will use your account to pay listing fees, for example.
Ebay is acting as an escrow service now. I don’t know if they are any better than PayPal, but hopefully they will drive some of the obvious scammers away. (I once bought a $1,000 Nikon D800e, and the seller shipped an empty envelope with tracking, to try to fool PayPal. I was able to recover my money, but it really puts a damper on my enthusiasm for the whole system…)
This, I can understand in some circumstances. The avoidance of going overdrawn is a priority, so for those whose income and payment dates are variable, it can be necessary to delay payment of some bills for a short time.
That’s one reason. But in a world of fraud and malfeasance and with banks that care not a fig for customer service, I take that POV entirely defensively. Timing f cashflow has nothing to do with it.
I have my bills arranged so that my bank pushes the money to the biller, rather than the biller pulling it from my bank. Any mistakes that could harm me would happen inside the company I’m the customer of. Also by the design of the system, I know what they’ll do a few days before they do it because they explicitly remind me of their intent.
Conversely, remote withdrawals are always a surprise when they happen. Yes, the car payment of $123.45 every month on the 23rd of the month is not really a surprise after the 3rd or 15th time it’s happened. But the one time it’s $10,123.45 that will be a surprise. And one that is messier to repair than to prevent.
the only autopay I have set up from my bank account is mortgage (to the bank itself) and municipal taxes. Anything more I can set up autopay on my credit card, or logon monthly to pay the bills manually from the bank app.
But again, the only way a transaction “takes” money from your account is via a bank. Presumably, either eBay is a bank too, or has an arrangement with their bank. Beocming a bank is a process with a decent amount of paperwork and other certifications attached, I’m sure - and any shenanigans will attract the attention of the feds. Wire fraud is a serous issue.
Getting compensation for direct theft from your bank account may eventually happen, but it may also take a long time. Or in some case, may never happen.
All true. But also all irrelevant to the actual issue.
The remote bank which wrongfully pulls money from your account is probably acting on the mistaken or fraudulent but legit appearing orders of their customer. That bank did nothing wrong. But that doesn’t help you recover the money wrongfully removed. Nor deal with any consequential problems like overdrafts or bounces when money unexpectedly disappears from your account. Even if it’s nowhere near your last dollar, it may well be a big enough lump to be near the last dollar routinely kept in that account.
Better IMO to absolutely positively prevent the potential for a problem by ensuring that no second-party bank can act on behalf of a 3rd-party business to remove funds from my account at my bank. I will order the money sent; not them.
I can delegate the authority to handle routine transactions to my bank’s computers, but I won’t delegate that authority to every possible lazy or incompetent bank on Earth, nor to every possible lazy, incompetent, or outright fraudster customer of all those banks.
Yes, but that article (and I see many similar items in the news) involve someone getting access to your banking app or web login. As I said earlier, once they do that, all bets are off - they can do anything. I’m impressed his bank alerted him when he had only a few thousand in a transaction - I assume because it was illegal.
The OP is asking about knowing the bank account numbers.
Other than cutting off customer access to accounts online, I see no answer for this vulnerability. Perhaps dual factor authentication (i.e. approval from a phone text or such) woul be a safety factor, but that too has been hacked in various ways.
I’ve seen a case where a hack on email was found - the perp somehow got to forward a copy of all incoming email to a surreptitious address, so emailing a security auth code would have been compromised. In a recent news article, the lady searched for her bank site to login from a work computer, and somehow ended up on a fraudulent site which she said looked exactly like her bank’s. She logged in, and then when it asked for the security code from her phone - she entered that, and her account began to be cleared out immediately - presumably a form of “monkey in the middle” attack.
Ovbiously (a) don’t logon to bank site from anything except your home PC, (b) have a good AV running, (c) be wary of clicking on links in emails (d) have a very different password for your bank than your other stuff.
With all the reports we see about intelligent and aware people losing large sums of money to scammers, I can understand why some people feel that they need to, in their words, “keep control”.
My view is that I accept the slight chance that PayPal or Amazon might be hacked and someone will take money from my current account. Against that, I value the convenience of allowing all the organisations that take money from me monthly to do so automatically, even if the amount varies.