<story><title>Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform</title><url>https://www.itnews.com.au/news/australias-new-payments-platform-goes-live-485045</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>djsumdog</author><text>Even before this, Australia still had direct person-to-person transfers. They&amp;#x27;d just take a day, and required an account number and name.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve written about this before, but American is terribly far behind on this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;penguindreams.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;the-american-banking-system-is-still-in-the-1990s&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;penguindreams.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;the-american-banking-system-i...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The closest thing we have in the US is Zelle, which is not a government mandated standard (like ACH) but a private standard created by banks and which only a fraction of banks in the US currently support.&lt;p&gt;And of course there are services like Venmo&amp;#x2F;Paypal, but these are private opt-in services, where as most other countries have this system mandated and fee-free between banks via their government reserve banks.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>srmatto</author><text>The US is in dismal shape compared to the UK and now Australia--And its pretty infuriating.&lt;p&gt;Although from what I understand on March 16th, 2018 the US will at least get same-day ACH. However, it will still be batch processed only two times each day--During banking hours no less!
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nacha.org&amp;#x2F;rules&amp;#x2F;same-day-ach-moving-payments-faster-phase-3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nacha.org&amp;#x2F;rules&amp;#x2F;same-day-ach-moving-payments-fas...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a NPR planet money on why the US has such an archaic system:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;sections&amp;#x2F;money&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;229224964&amp;#x2F;episode-489-the-invisible-plumbing-of-our-economy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;sections&amp;#x2F;money&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;229224964&amp;#x2F;epis...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Their hypothesis? Unsurprisingly, perverse incentives. Wire transfers in the US, which usually carry a high fee ($30) are very lucrative for banks so they don&amp;#x27;t have much interest in eliminating the need for wire transfers at the moment, but it appeared that there was growing interest in moving to real-time eventually.</text></comment>
<story><title>Australia’s new real-time banking payments platform</title><url>https://www.itnews.com.au/news/australias-new-payments-platform-goes-live-485045</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>djsumdog</author><text>Even before this, Australia still had direct person-to-person transfers. They&amp;#x27;d just take a day, and required an account number and name.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve written about this before, but American is terribly far behind on this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;penguindreams.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;the-american-banking-system-is-still-in-the-1990s&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;penguindreams.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;the-american-banking-system-i...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The closest thing we have in the US is Zelle, which is not a government mandated standard (like ACH) but a private standard created by banks and which only a fraction of banks in the US currently support.&lt;p&gt;And of course there are services like Venmo&amp;#x2F;Paypal, but these are private opt-in services, where as most other countries have this system mandated and fee-free between banks via their government reserve banks.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>idonotknowwhy</author><text>Aussie here. I never knew that the U.S lacked this. We&amp;#x27;ve had this feature for decades.
Within the same bank, it&amp;#x27;s instant. Inter-bank it can happen the same day depending on the banks involved and when they run their batch processing.
I always considered this a primitive system for not being instant.</text></comment>