No, I don’t believe the manager made the statement at all. Well, he may have apologized for being short-staffed, but he certainly did not tell a customer that they were short-staffed to avoid paying employee benefits.
It never happened.
Do you need a personal PIN number there too?
US banks and the services they offer lag behind much of the rest of the world. It’s not new.
Over 25 years ago, living in Europe, I could pay all monthly bills with a transfer. (The bills came in the form of a transfer form that could be sent to the bank for payment. Or, you could have a standing order “Pay my utility bill every month”, up to a max amount). Auto pay has come along in the US, but it was decades later than elsewhere. Same was true of ATMs.
I could write checks in any currency. I had a check guarantee card at the time that was accepted in any business, in any country, up to the equivalent of about $500. (the old Eurocheque system, it was wound down about 10 years ago). At the time here in the US, I couldn’t write a check in a neighboring town for a $15 purchase.
I could pay any person or any business with a transfer I initiated myself. No charge.
US banks had auto bill pay a while back. I know because they screwed it up the first time they did it for my father.
But in general US banks had to be dragged kicking and screaming into a lot of stuff. Even now they won’t transfer money over the weekend or on a holiday. I guess they were forced to have credit/debit cards work every day since it would be a joke if they only worked M-F.
California.
But this usually takes a number of business days.
for me popmoney is next day transfer for amounts under $500. above that it’s 3 days. I am pretty sure the bank sets those parameters. Some banks may do all transfers next day.
They must get some special terms from their credit card processors, because every agreement I signed with CC companies always has a clause that says you cannot tack on fees for using a credit card.
Can you pay pretty much any kind of bill, or any individual, with popmoney? And if so, how does the transfer process work? I was recently infuriated to learn that, in many cases, my bank’s online bill payment system mails the payee a paper check drawn on my own account, and I have to wait for it to clear. What I’d always assumed was that the funds would be taken out of my account at the very beginning of the process and placed in a disbursement account, so the effect would be the same as buying a cashier’s check or money order.
What makes the online payment system such a joke is the fact that with paper-check payees, my own check will almost always reach the payee and be cashed sooner than if I use the bank’s system, and sometimes this is also true for supposedly electronic payees too. We’ve given up using the electronic system for that reason.
U.S. banks usually offer online bill pay, but that doesn’t mean the payment is actually made electronically. The bank will often print and mail a paper check to the payee. Oddly, the bank will sometimes do this even when the payee will let you set up actual electronic payments through its own web site. The bank will do this even when the payee is ALSO a bank with customers all over the country [:rolleyes:]
Starting sometime in 2013, Mastercard and Visa agreed to allow surcharges to their credit cards as part of a legal settlement. (although merchants can’t impose a surcharge if state law prohibits it ) But even before that , the credit card issuers allowed government entities to pass on the fees- government agencies can’t build the costs of accepting credit cards into payments the way retailers can. After reading this, I now understand “convenience fees”. I never could understand how those were allowed but not surcharges on other sales.
Popmoney uses the email address or mobile number or the recipients actual bank account info. If you use the first two methods , the recipient is notified that you have sent them money and then gives Popmoney the account info for the account they want the funds deposited into.
I’ve found that paying utilities, credit cards and other loans and insurance companies result in an electronic transfer. Basically, if my bank has the recipient listed as a payee in the system , it’s an electronic transfer. If I have to provide the name and address of the recipient, it’s a paper check.
Cite? The branch manager (or operations officer IIRC) was obviously exasperated with working conditions at her bank. Yes, she probably did not explicitly mention why her bank chose to use part-time tellers, but the reason was common knowledge.
Knowing you, you’ll love this: They do have special terms. The government carved out an exception for itself so it wouldn’t have to pay any credit card processing fees. Those are all passed to the consumer in the form of extra fees.
Just paid a driver’s license fee in Hawaii (50 clams) with a credit card and was charged an extra $1.18 for the privilege.
Before this goes too far, let me remind everyone that in the United States, the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 does not allow credit card companies to prohibit cash discounts. Any clause in your merchant agreement to the contrary is unenforceable.
15 U.S. Code § 1693o-2(b)(2)
My dad, who had his whole career in banking and the last 20 years or so in international banking software, told us about American presentations of banking technology like that, “electronic” transfers that consisted of scanning checks at one end and printing it at the other end.
I’m 40, and I’ve never owned a check book, but in all fairness I did pay bills by snail mail giros for a few years before online banking took off here in Norway.
Isn’t the bolded part his cite?
Is there any reason other than history and “because they can” that wire transfers are so expensive? Most of our clients (giant international aid agencies) pay exclusively by wire. Not ACH, not direct deposit–only wire. Most banks charge an insane $14-$20 per incoming transfer, which can really add up. We shopped around and finally found one that has free incoming wires (but they still charge a lot for outgoing). But that’s a higher end account (high balance or we face a high monthly fee) and was unusual among both large and small banks.
I suspect it would be a lot easier to send money electronically in the US if we’d had giros. We just never really had the concept of ordinary people sending money to another person or entity’s bank account on a regular basis.
Which is not quite the same thing as prohibiting the CC networks from prohibiting the merchants from charging consumers a “convenience fee” for using a CC/DC. That network prohibition, with the exceptions noted by others above, is still both legal and common.
I suppose things are going to change soon. Banks have to accept faster and cheaper transfers or cry and accept them. Companies like TransferWise are handling a growing chunk of money transfers. Either these new services handle eventually most of the transfers or banks do something about it. Many banks seem to be interested about a payment protocol created by Ripple Labs. It allows instant transfers for a nominal fee.