Again, related to the 10-year reunion I'm helping to plan, I'm now thinking about how we're going to collect funds for this.

The only method we can think of at the moment is Paypal, but I'm concerned about the fees associated with it. That's basically my concern with any solution I can think of. We're already going to be tight on cash, and taking 2-5% of everything is going to hurt.

Probably the simplest way is to have people mail checks/cash to us, but that's a whole lot more difficult.

Any ideas?

Bitt, do you remember what the deal with Obopay was?

I don't know how the system is over there, but how about just setting up a bank account and then everyone can just transfer money to that account the same way they pay any other bill?

Stig

Ugh.

Not sure. I'm not sure if that's possible, though. You'd need to give everyone the account/routing numbers, wouldn't you?

I'm pretty sure if you use a "personal" paypal account (instead of a "business" account), you won't be charged any transaction fees.

They've twiddled with their fees quite a bit recently, and it seems rather difficult to "pay a pal" without them taking a cut of it now.

A pal recently send me some funds, and they managed to nick several percent from the US$57 transaction, leaving me short a couple of bucks.

If it's defined as a personal payment there is an option for the sender to collect the fees - last time I made a payment it was quite obvious.

I am not a banking expert, and am relying solely on my personal experience. That said:

You can use your bank's BillPay for anything, but unless you are a recipient that they have a good reason to have a direct-deposit relationship with, they're going to send out a check in the mail. This does save the sender the cost of a stamp, but I don't imagine that's your concern. You're still going to have to deal with opening several hundred envelopes, endorsing that many checks, manually transcribing that data into your database, etc.

You can have people have a bank transfer made, but it's going to cost them an outrageous sum, like at least $20.

You still have to deal with Paypal-like systems.

Since the last time I looked, though, it seems Amazon has entered the market with TextPayMe. I can't immediately find any limits or fees....

Also, mPayy. Free for P2P transactions. Can't find any data on maximums.

This space still sucks. Visa and/or MasterCard really need to get into this business. I guess there's not really any profit in it for them. Maybe laws need to be changed so that banks can start offering this service. (I can't believe I just suggested deregulating banks.)

100 transactions a month

You should also be able to go into any branch of the deposit account's bank and make a deposit to that account, by cash, without incurring any fees. This isn't a "wire" or "TT" which is the type of transfer that would incur the $20+ fee Bitt mentioned.

I say just keep it simple and have people send a check made payable to whomever is collecting the money. The biggest danger here is that some cheque may be made out to the incorrect name, making them impossible/difficult to cash/deposit.

True, but then you have no record of who sent the payment.


I have a hard time disagreeing with this. It'd be worth it to point out in the communication that people should be able to use their bank's billpay service to accomplish this. (I, for one, don't keep any physical checks anymore.)

And since people are paying to show up to a physical event, dealing with a handful of incorrect checks is easily solvable by just having them fork over cash when they show up. I also think it would probably be legal to deposit a check made out to an organization's name by using the name as a d/b/a.

That's true, but I suspect the number of people with Paypal accounts is the minority.

All in all, I've worked out that it'll cost us about $260 to collect using Paypal. I think it might just be the easiest way and we'll have to deal with the fees.


The question I have is: why is this an option? Shouldn't it be an option for the recipient? So now the sender say "hmm, you know what? I'd like to pay more." That seems odd to me. We could have a little text saying "you have to select the option to pay the fees," but only half the people are going to see that.

Is there something about this mechanism that I'm not understanding? Paypal probably has the worst help section of any service I've used. It took me about 10 minutes to actually find out what their damn fees are! It seems practically illegal to hide that kind of information like that.

Oh, you want to be able to accept credit card payments and not have people sign up for anything? Yeah, good luck with that. If you have that many people you're contacting and any significant number pay via PayPal via a credit card, your account is going to be pushed into the next tier, I'm pretty sure.

Your best bet is probably TextPayMe. Call it Amazon WebPay; that includes their web-based payment system, and adds an air of authenticity.

If I were you, I think I would provide people multiple ways to pay. Tell them something like, "You can pay via Amazon WebPay, credit card, or by sending a check. If you want to pay by using a credit card, I'm afraid we'll have to charge you a $x.xx fee beyond the cost of the reunion in order to cover the processing fees, but you can use a credit card to fund the Amazon WebPay payment for free."

Okay, Amazon Payments looks like it might be a winner. If you already have an Amazon account, most of your payment information is copied over, including verifications. All I had to do was verify my mobile phone number, which took like a minute. And, I guess, if you just want to pay from the web site, you don't even need to do that.

If you want to accept credit cards via PayPal you're going to lose 30 cents per transaction plus 2.9% of the transaction amount. The "customer" doesn't need a PayPal account.

Plus you need to have a PayPal premier or business account. You absolutely cannot do this with a "Personal" account. In fact, a personal account isn't actually good for anything anymore. Just forget they even exist.

Actually, I'm also pretty sure you'll have to set up some encrypted buttons for the txn amount which your "customers" will have to click on. Otherwise I don't think there is any way to just go to PayPal.com and send someone money from a credit card without a PayPal account.

I do this for a living. Trust me, take checks and forget about PayPal for this.

Amazon fees:



The first two payment scenarios, and credit card transactions under $10 are at better price rates than PayPal.

That's for business accounts, no? I believe personal accounts have no fees at all. I could be wrong, though.

Yeah, they have a very convenient button creation tool with a decent amount of options. I'll be using that if I go with Paypal. I'll take a look at Amazon too. I'll need to create a new Amazon account, though, to link to the bank account we opened for this purpose (forgot to mention that).

You're wrong.

My personal account was charged the 2.9% + 0.30 for money from someone earlier this week, and they didn't even use a CC.

Cheers

Amazon WebPay FAQ:

Amazon Payments Fees & Account Limits:

The only fees I see are for using Amazon Simple Pay or Checkout by Amazon. It seems that both Personal and Business accounts can use those services. But if you just use WebPay or TextPayMe, it still appears that there is no fee. Again, I could be wrong. Can you confirm that you didn't use ASP or CbA?

I haven't been in this thread until today and at first I was thinking you were in a slightly different situation- having to make similar payments to multiple accounts at once.

heh

I meant paypal.. didn't know you meant Amazon.

Cheers

Personal PayPal accounts didn't used to be able to receive credit card payments. If they now can, it's limited to something like up to 5 per month or similar. Seriously, look at the information for a Personal account, which is the most confusing content on their site, and you'll quickly find out that Personal accounts are useless. They also have a receiving limit which includes all forms of payment, including from other people's accounts directly.

The rates for Amazon I posted were directly from their site, but from a different page than the one you linked. It didn't say anything about the rates being for any specific type of account.

The page you linked lists personal limits, but doesn't say that personal accounts don't ALSO pay the receiving fees.

BTW, that whole Amazon payments site looks like it was lifted directly from PayPal. And the level of confusion and obscurity for "Personal" WebPay is at least as bad as PayPal's.

Agreed.

Agreed. I also don't know how the system in the US work, but here in Europe you can simply open up a bank account (or use an existing one), then provide the bank account number to the persons that need to send you money and they can wire it to that said bank account. Very easy, no hassle and safe, because that account number can only be used to put money onto the account, not retrieving any money from it (without owning other necessary codes).

In the last couple of years this system has expanded all over Europe, meaning I can now directly wire money to any account number in Europe I know the IBAN (bank account number) and BIC/SWIFT code (specific code needed to determine the specific bank) of, all without additional cost.

Doesn't this or a comparable system exist in the US?

In the UK at least handing out your account number to too many people can get you into trouble. With your account number and sort code people can setup direct debit instructions in your name.

The direct debit guarantee should ensure that you can reverse any such unauthorized direct debits, but it won't stop it being a huge pain in the arse if it happened.

As Jeremy Clarkson found out:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1574781/Jeremy-Clarkson-eats-his-words-over-ID-theft.html

Those direct debits don't exist in Belgium. Maybe that's why giving out a bank account number doesn't feel 'unsafe' to me.

It seems to me those direct debits are more trouble than they are worth though. Why would you need those in the first place? Anyone who wants to make a legitimate deposit can surely be bothered to ok the transfer?

Direct debits are the mechanism in the UK that is used for paying monthly bills automatically. You set up a direct debit instruction with a company and they use it to collect the money needed to pay your credit card bill, phone bill, magazine subscription etc

What it needed is a separate number that can be used to pay money into your account, but can't be used to setup direct debits.

Ah, I see. That system exists here as well, but new direct deposits are never set up without:
- the owner of the bank account requesting this in person (or his plenipotentiary)
- a document is sent to the bank with the original signature of the bank account owner. And even then, in case of doubt, most banks will check with their customer (by phone or otherwise) to make sure the direct deposit request is above board.

I believe that's pretty safe.

I believe I am right in saying that a company running a direct debit scheme in the UK does not need to forward anything to the bank when it is setup. They simple hold the copy of the direct debit application on file.

Also, in the UK was have paper less direct debits that can be setup online or over the phone, so your signature isn't needed.

They are however required to give you prior warning of a direct debit being made, but given that this can be via email (which in the case if a fraudulently setup direct debit probably won't be your email address), then the first thing you might know about a fraudulent direct debit is the money leaving your account.

The US banking industry is too fractured to be able to provide something like this, yet.

Not for regular folks, no.

Employers frequently make direct deposits for salaries, and many banks have a bill paying service that can do electronic transfers to pay certain large companies, like, for example, DirecTV, credit card companies, the power company, etc., but not, for example, your local doctor or the exterminator. (Though those services will generally send paper checks to such recipients in the mail.)

But the only electronic transfers that individuals can do between each other is generally known as a Wire Transfer, it's routed through the Federal Reserve Bank, it generally takes like a week, and it's pricey. My current bank charges $6, and that is super cheap. My previous bank charged something like $40 for this service and required that you fill out forms in person at a bank branch.

Whoa! I guess we're really spoiled!

Not totally true. Some banks do not charge for outgoing or incoming ACH transfers and allow them to be originated from personal accounts. Here's an [OLD] list. Check with your bank to know for sure.

US and even Canadian banks are at least 10 years behind most European banks in most ways. Except perhaps sub-prime mortgages for the US banks.

I forgot about ACH.


Why — oh why! — couldn't it have been an organization and not an association?

What is the difference?

As an association, it's NACHA. As an organization, it would have been NACHO.

Thanks Bitt

Corollary to the discussion in this thread...

Situation:

- Communal household.

- Rent must be paid to the landlord via a single check (it's in the rental agreement), and rent check must arrive in the hands of the landlord by the first of the month (no grace period, late fees assessed immediately). I feel that this is unreasonable, but there's nothing I can do about that part of it.

- Household has established a communal bank account at Wells Fargo for paying rent, bills, and groceries. I manage this account.

- My preference is to pay the landlord and the household bills via the online Bill Pay account at Wells Fargo.

- Members of household all get paid on the first and the 15th of each month.

- Members of household transfer certain predefined amounts of money into the communal account after getting paid. Minor fluctuations in the bills and groceries are covered by me and/or small amounts of budget padding.

- All bills (except for the unreasonable rent restrictions) are due on, or very close to, the appropriate time period following the first and the 15th of each month. For example, due around the 10th or the 25th or so, giving me time to pay them after receiving the transfers following everyone's first/15th paychecks. Rent for the following month is paid out of the prior month's 15th-of-month transfers, to compensate for the unreasonable rent payment restrictions.

So far so good. There's only one hitch in all of this...

All members of the household bank with Wells Fargo except for one member, who banks with BofA. Everyone else can do instant transfers into the household account except for this person.

We need to find a method for the BofA person to get their money into the household account twice a month, that's going to give us the best balance of timeliness versus ease-of-transaction. Anyone have any ideas?

Here's what we've tried so far:

- BofA member writes a physical check and deposits it into a Wells Fargo ATM using the household account's ATM card. This works, however it can only happen on the 16th or later because the BofA member's direct-deposit paycheck doesn't hit their account until EOD on the 15th. Then the deposit takes a few days to clear (especially if payday falls on a Friday). And besides, physically traveling to an ATM to do the deposit is a hassle twice a month, and therefore severely increases the possibility of procrastination (we've already experienced that one). This is, so far, the fastest way we've found, yet the least convenient.

- BofA member uses their online Bill Pay feature, with the Wells Fargo household account as the payee. I'm skeptical, but I'm told it *will* work, as the BofA member has done the same kind of thing before. We just tried it for the first time, but it's been several days and I haven't seen it hit the household account yet. If it does, in fact, end up working, it would be the most convenient method for everyone, but it's not timely enough to cover the billpays and rent as quickly as I'd like it to.

- Asking the banker who set up the household account. He didn't seem to have any ideas other than the physical check deposit.


Things we haven't tried yet:

- Paypal. That's got a clearance-time, too, although perhaps the number of days of clearance-time would not be so bad compared to other methods. And does it have a fee or a limit? What's the fee/limit if so? We'd have to either set up a paypal account for the household, or have the money sent to my personal account, I'd wait for it to clear, then I do an instant transfer into the household account. Overall, not the most convenient thing, but certainly more convenient than a physical trip to the ATM.

Things we're *not* going to try:

- BofA member changing banks. There is too much going on there to make the shift, it would be a disaster for their accounts.

- Pre-loading the funds any further than we already are. We're all pretty strapped at the moment.

- Wire transfers, or any other method that involves fees/charges.

- Splitting up the BofA member's direct-deposits so that they go to different places. That would be the ultimate solution, as it would be the most convenient as well as the timeliest. Unfortunately, there was a technical reason this wasn't possible, and I don't remember what that reason was at the moment. I'm thinking of re-investigating it, though, now that I've brought it up and I've realized exactly how convenient it would be.


In the meantime, anyone else got any ideas?

First, I would be surprised if the BillPay from the BoA individual account to the WF individual account didn't show up as a check in your mailbox. How was the WF account specified in the BoA BillPay?

Second, there is a faster method than your "fast/inconvenient" method. Instead of depositing a check, get cash from BoA and deposit cash in WF. It's more inconvenient, but there's no clearing time for cash.

Your best bet remains split direct deposit. There is no publicly accessible immediate (or even less-than-several-days) funds transfer system in the US.

The only other thing I can think of is a credit card that has associated checks. If you get a credit card that doesn't start charging interest until the next billing period comes around, it could function as your free elastic buffer.

The direct deposit would definitely be the easiest way. Does the employer not allow multiple direct deposit accounts (ours is limited to five accounts I think it is)?

Tony, I feel your pain. When I was renting in grad school, I had an automatic (Quicken CheckFree) payment mailed to my landlord every month and I didn't worry about it. Then, two years ago when I was renting a place while on sabbatical, my landlord insisted that I deposit a check at her bank directly. She wouldn't take a check in the mail. At the time, I couldn't find any automatic way of doing the payments. (Grumble. You'd think a landlord with so many properties would have some sort of service to manage automated payments, but no.)

If I was in your situation, where BofA allows for these sorts of instant transfers, I'd have the roommate get a BofA account for the sole purpose of being a landing pad for the money which would then allow for the automated transfer. Then the roommate arranges for a chunk of their paycheck to go directly to BofA (or, alternately, keeps a bigger chunk of cash in the BofA account and writes occasional checks). The #1 downside is having a second minimum balance for your roommate to deal with. This requires keeping the cash around, and then it's also earning less interest than you might prefer. A variant on the situation is to have some of the paycheck money go directly into the house shared account without the personal BofA account in the middle. This would work well for fixed/repeating costs (rent) but would complicate life for variable expenses (power, water), requiring more complex bookkeeping and the house occasionally either asking for money or giving a rebate.

If your roommate cannot split the paycheck, then you need to sort out whether the bank can do it (no doubt, with obnoxious fees). A brokerage trading account might also be willing to receive a direct deposit and route it multiple ways, possibly with lower fees. Never looked into that myself. I will point out that my broker does do free electronic bank transfers in and out of my core trading account. I use this as an easy way to route money between two different bank accounts (my relatively unused credit union account and my main bank).

When you draw cash from a credit card, whether via ATM or by these "convenience checks," it begins accruing interest immediately. Otherwise, you'd be able to use your credit card to buy other investments and pocket the profits. That's clearly not allowed.

(Never mind that, when banks place holds on big deposits or otherwise slow down the flow of money, that's exactly what they're doing to you, effectively borrowing your money from you without paying you any interest.)

Yes, this was my skepticism as well. However, I'm told that when it's spec'd the way we spec'd it (destination address of Wells Fargo Bank, account number of the household account number), then the bank receives it and deposits it to the specified account. Hopefully in the next couple of days we'll see the funds hit, and have this confirmed.



In my past experience, placing cash into a deposit envelope at an ATM ends up with the same, or close to the same, clearing-time. The back-end system of gathering the ATM envelopes and processing their contents doesn't distinguish between checks and money until farther down the line. I remember once putting hundreds of cash dollars into an ATM on a Friday night and being unable to access those funds until mid-week the following week. So the only way to get an ATM deposit to happen instantly is to skip the ATM and deposit at a teller window. Which is even more inconvenient than going to an ATM.



Yeah, I'm hoping that we can work out a split direct deposit. I need to find out why it wasn't possible the first time we investigated it, and investigate it harder.

Also still considering PayPal.

Lots of replies and I scanned them but only the first couple in detail.

Easiest from my perspective: the BofA person deposits cash or cheque into the Wells account as you've mentioned.

Get a suitable overdraft protection on your Wells account. $500 to $1000 should easily cover that person's portion of the rent.

Depositing cash at an ATM is the same as cheque for the actual deposit day, but if it's an ATM at a bank, they should remove the automatic hold the very next business day for cash. Instead of like 5 or 6 for a cheque.

If you have overdraft protection on that account, the hold won't matter. Or shouldn't unless your bank uses some sketchy practices.

Direct deposit may not work if the person is not named on the WF account, this is the case with my employer. Given that you refer to it as the communal bank account this may not apply.

You mean like charging automatic transfer fees, like every bank in the US does?

Fees for automatic transfers? Yeah, that's pretty slimy. I mean, all the banks here charge per debit, but they don't charge additional for auto transfers. And I believe most waive the fee when you're debiting and crediting accounts at the same bank in the form of a transfer (as opposed to a manual withdrawal and then a deposit).

No, I mean overdraft transfers. For Wachovia (east-coast Wells Fargo) and Bank of America, it's $10. For my bank, (North Carolina State Employees' Credit Union), it's $0.50. (By the way, the NSF fees are $22, $35, and $12, respectively.)

Few banks in the US charge per-debit, though.

Oh. Overdraft protection (that I was recommending) doesn't involve transfers. It's credit available on your bank account, allowing your balance to drop below 0 without bouncing the cheque.

As long as the BoA guy makes his deposit before the cheque clears, the account will not drop below 0 and you'll have by-passed the ATM hold. If one day there's some slip-up and it does, there won't be an NSF charge from the bank nor an angry landlord with his own charges.

In the US, it usually does. Generally (though not always), it's implemented by being tied into another account (which might be a credit account), and if the bank receives a check for which you have insufficient funds, they automatically transfer money from the other account and charge a fee on top of that, which I detailed in my last post.

And there was me thinking y'all would run out of stuff to fix once you'd fixed healthcare.

Peter

Oh, don't worry. They're working on it at the same time.

The Card Game

I heard somewhere that while the banking industry is back to making a profit after the federal bailouts, the amount of their profit that is due to banking fees is well over 100%.

ROFL

Yeah, it's pretty slimy. When your banker sets up the bank account, he's careful to make sure to set up that "Overdraft Protection" as he calls it. Somehow I still get that fee if I bust the threshold and it has to pull 20 bucks from my savings account to cover it. Grr.

I was surprised to find my little credit union is also getting in on the auto transfer fee crap now. They have historically been decent, but it seems everyone is shaking down their customers in the US for more money.

At least they still refund up to $10 per month in ATM fees charged by other banks. One sad part about my ATM visits is that it's becoming cheeper for me to go use one at a gas station then it is to go to most bank owned ATMs.

My credit union is the second largest credit union in the country. If it were a bank, it would be the 5th largest bank in the country, very close in value to Wells Fargo, behind only BoA, Chase, Citi, and Wells Fargo. (Edit: Uh, nevermind. It's not clear from that data, but I was off by a factor of 1000. Still, it's pretty big.)

Bank Data
Credit Union Data

Like I said, they charge 50¢. Sadly, their total income from fees is still just over $50M, but that's less than $33 a year per member, and they charge a $1 per month fee for their (interest-bearing) checking account, so call it $21 in fees per member per year.

They're also very friendly, very helpful, don't sell off their mortgages at all, etc. I also think they don't do much, if any, speculative investing. It's the best financial institution I've ever done business with. I wonder why other banks don't follow their lead.

I typically go to the closest grocery, buy a pack of gum or a 12-pack of Dr. Pepper, use my ATM card, and make an additional withdrawal then. No fees.

I have never been charged a fee of any kind for any service by my bank, a small, locally owned bank in Fairbanks, Alaska. Those services include checking, savings, wire transfers to foreign countries, money orders, automatic monthly bill pay, electronic banking, overdraft protection, and a host of other services I don't remember or never needed to use. (I have used all of the services listed above)

My overdraft protection is not free, but there is no fee involved. Instead, I have a revolving line of credit so if I go into overdraft, the bank just covers the overdraft and I pay about 8% annual interest on the loan which is normally paid back within a few days so actual expense is trivial.

By contrast, I have an account here in California, whose sole purpose is to have a debit card I can use at Costco (they don't take my Visa card there) and the fees are horrific. They charge me about $8.00 a month for the "privilege" of having a savings account there that pays about half a percent annual interest, they charged me a fortune for a book of 25 checks (none of which I have ever used) and I am fully expecting them to put NY Subway style turnstiles at the entrance to the bank so you have to pay to get into the lobby.

I'll keep my Alaska bank account for as long as they'll have me. The Bank of America account is going away real soon.

tanstaafl.

I used to do that too now I have been just using the debit card to pay for everything. It has been quicker to use that to pay 1.09 for a pop than cash since most places don't even make you sign.

Well, not just that bit. It's pretty general in the UK nowadays that you can ring up your bank and do a transfer to someone else's account, even at another bank, for free and (I'm fairly sure) same-day. Online too, though for anti-fraud reasons the bank I use will only let you do online transfers to accounts you've done transfers to before, so the first one has to be by phone banking.

On the other hand I've never heard of direct deposit to more than one account, though maybe that's something people don't need over here because inter-account transfers are so easy.

Peter

Same day for accounts at the same bank; I think it's usually 3-4 days for accounts at other banks, although there are periodically noises about forcing the banks to change this -- it's artificial, and they just sit on the money for those days.



My bank will let me set up transfers online as well.



Never heard of this either.

It isn't just noises any more, it really is same day between any of the banks implementing the Faster Payments scheme.

http://www.apacs.org.uk/sortcodechecker/index.html

Not all the banks are doing it yet, but a good half of my payments end up going same day now, for free.

My credit union is the same way. Free checks, interest earned on savings and checking accounts, no fee outside of interest for overdraft, etc. They do charge for out of network ATMs, which is rough since the credit union is in UT and I'm in AZ. It works great for online payment though.

I, uh, availed myself of my overdraft protection recently. (I did it all for you guys.) Turns out that the bank sends me a letter via first-class mail so I get it ASAP, which costs 33¢ postage. So 50¢ sounds like it's pretty much just to cover costs.


Huh? Do they not take Visa at all or something?

Costco is American Express only. I don't think they accept anything other than cash, American Express or a local check. I don't think debit cards work as they aren't connected to the VISA/Mastercard system that most debit cards use to connect to the bank account.

Thankfully Costco in the UK accept debit cards

I remember when I started my first job, at the newly opened ADSA hypermarket (which at the time was the biggest in the UK). They only accepted cash and cheques.

Worse than that, you couldn't use a cheque on your first visit. You had to pay with cash the first time (I think there was a minimum amount you had to spend) and then take your receipt and cheque book to customer services. They would then stamp your cheque book, which would mean your cheques would be accepted next time you shopped.

Nowadays there are plenty of places that don't take cheques at all, thank goodness.

Costco in Canada (just for comparison) accept American Express, Cash and all Canadian ATM cards (our "debit cards") The processing for cards is independent of the card vendors, and for ATM cards it's called "Interac." In the US you have the Plus system, which allows use of cards on that network at ATMs (they don't have to be Visa nor MC). I have no idea is anyone supports Plus at retail.

Plus is only one of many interbank networks, though (I think) the largest and one of the few nationwide ones. Those networks all interoperate, though. They function as the intermediary for both ATM and PoS purchases for ATM/debit/check cards.

It seems like they would be the best candidate for direct transfer of funds between people. I don't know why something hasn't already come up. I would guess that either there's some legislation involved or they don't think it would be profitable, or both.

Interac also does the interbank "email money transfers" in Canada that we've previously discussed in another thread. And charges $1.50 for each such transaction.

I just had to have a comment here. I'm really surprised this is so much hassle for you guys in the US. In Australia we can easily transfer money electronically with just a BSB (Bank State Branch) and Account Number. All the banks have online banking facilities and regular transfers can be easily set up.

The money makes it there overnight (at worst - sometimes even same day). About the only quicker way is walking into a bank and depositing cash with the teller (ie no ATM)

The transaction is essentially free. It counts as a withdrawal on one account and then a deposit on the other. Deposits are almost always free although some accounts have a limited number of free withdrawals per month (usually 10 or 20 or so).

You can even put your own description which appears on the receiver's statement. Even though it's a credit friends and I have often put dubious text comments in to embarrass each other.

And we're always whinging about bank fees and the banks making huge profits here...

Hehe. I just found this:


It's got to be legislation.

I thought I was the only person that did that.....

Direct deposit to more than one account seems pretty common, at least at the places where I've worked. Even if inter-account transfers are simple, if you know that about 20% of your paycheck needs to end up in your checking account to cover expenses, and 2% needs to go into your daughter's college savings account, and 15% is slated for your investment account, why wouldn't you set it up so you don't have to keep making those transfers?

Necropost.

Dwolla looks interesting.

$0.25 fee per transaction, unless it's less than $10, in which case it's free. cite

$5000 limit per transaction, but apparently no limit on the number of transactions or total amount transferred. cite

Nice! I'll have to remember this in another 12-13 years for my 25th HS Reunion...