Which EU countries have those been?

The EU has recently reduced fees for one of the biggest instant payment systems of the world (SCT inst reaches the Eurozone's 350M residents). Compare the quality of that to a wire or to a ACH transfer.

EU is also ahead with security. PSD2's requirements go further than US requirements, and they are also ahead in the magnetic swipe card phaseout.

Wise and Revolut, two companies which brought a lot of innovation to international money transfer, were founded in the EU as well (since 2020 not EU companies any more).

Of course, all of this doesn't mean that the average EU bank doesn't suck. But I heard worse of the US.

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free652 a day ago | parent | next [-]

>magnetic swipe card phaseout.

Swipe? I don't recall a time when I needed to swipe in US in the last few years. Pretty much tap, tap, tap, tap. Actually you cannot swipe a card in US that has a chip, and probably 99% of cards have chips.

>Compare the quality of that to a wire or to a ACH transfer.

Zelle? Just a qr code or a phone number? And it's free?

>Wise and Revolut

No clue. What's so special that I don't have with Chase?

>EU is also ahead with security

Um isn't that useless? As more scams are via social engineering.

>But I heard worse of the US.

I heard the same about EU, actually MUCH worse :)

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Symbiote a day ago | parent [-]

> Swipe? I don't recall a time when I needed to swipe in US in the last few years.

I do, earlier this year visiting the USA. The readers on pumps at two different gas stations.

But the EU started phasing out reading magnetic strips twenty years ago, well before the USA had even started issuing EMV chip cards.

> Zelle?

Zelle is only for person-to-person transfers, Europe has had good person-to-business, business-to-person and business-to-business transfers for decades.

> ...

The point wasn't that the USA didn't have these things, but that Europe had them earlier (sometimes much earlier), so the banking system led to this innovation.

	▲	free652 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well you found one, and I can tell you about time when in EU that a place took a hard print of my card in the last 5 years! Didn't even know that card imprinters still exists. Zelle is not just person to person, it's just a transfer. You can pay businesses, people and even transfer to yourself. Zero fees. Europe is a big continent and I can easily find a place that is way more backwards ;) Also 2 letters from EMV stands for 2 American companies :).

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eru a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Monzo was also founded in the EU, in the UK specifically when they were still in the EU.

> The EU has recently reduced fees for one of the biggest instant payment systems of the world (SCT inst reaches the Eurozone's 350M residents).

But that was done by regulation, wasn't it? Would have been nicer to see that come as a result of competition.

> Of course, all of this doesn't mean that the average EU bank doesn't suck. But I heard worse of the US.

I don't know about the average. But I can tell you that quality varies a lot. I was generally OK with German banks (having grown up there), but UK banks before Monzo (and Revolut, Wise etc) used to be the scum of the earth. Just like their supermarkets used to feel openly hostile to me as a customer before Aldi and Lidl showed up and shook up the market.

Yes, Tesco and friends regularly get told off by the regulator before, but nothing changed until competition forced their hands, and gave customers something they preferred.

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toyg a day ago | parent | next [-]

> UK banks [...] used to be the scum of the earth

They still had chip&pin before US banks, and dropped unsafe cheques before US banks.

The US banking system, afaik, did one thing better: credit cards. But since the '00s, European ones have been just as good and often better.

	▲	eru a day ago \| parent [-]
		> They still had chip&pin before US banks, and dropped unsafe cheques before US banks. Oh, I never banked in the US, so I can't comment on them from a consumer point of view. > The US banking system, afaik, did one thing better: credit cards. But since the '00s, European ones have been just as good and often better. I used credit cards perhaps a handful of times in my life. It's almost exclusively been debit cards for me.

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shivasaxena a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> But that was done by regulation, wasn't it? Would have been nicer to see that come as a result of competition.

Bill Gurly has been crying for years now about how US banks have been bocking/not-participating in equivalent services in US(Fed Now) and for good business reasons for them.

A well functioning market does need regulations. Not everything can be magically fixed by "competition"

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kivatinos_bill-gurley-on-paym...

	▲	eru a day ago \| parent [-]
		> A well functioning market does need regulations. Not everything can be magically fixed by "competition" Ideally, you can set up your regulations so that competition has more bite. Much of the time, you can remove special purpose regulations for a specific sector, and can get by with just the generics: enforcing contracts, punishing fraud, etc.