With fintech that surprises me not the slightest bit. Financial institutions are filled to the brim with unbelievably incompetent people. A large part of it is probably willful ignorance, too. It's often truly staggering that a financial company I interact with in day to day live is even able to exist. That's until I remember that all the others are just as incompetent.

"Major European Payment Processor" really just translates to "Major European Incompetence Center".

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oasisbob 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

With a broad statement like this, I would usually just suggest this is inflammatory and surely overstated.

However, I've also worked at a financial institution which used core systems by Harland Financial Systems. Their "encryption" for data in transit from teller workstations to the core system was just a two byte XOR, and they sent the key at the beginning of the connection!

Was so unbelievable to be able to crack this in under a half-hour after noticing patterns in a PCAP. Wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

That fraud was good enough for our regulators and theirs, so I have no doubt the industry is filled with rotten incompetence through and through.

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ryandrake 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The biggest disappointment in my 30 years of adulting has been how much absolute, shameless incompetence is out there in the workforce. When I was a kid, I naively thought that adults were smart and knew what they are doing. Then I got into industry and saw so many people just outright bluffing for 8 hours a day before going home, day in and day out.

It's amazing that society even functions at all.

	▲	Foivos 16 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		At least when you realize it, you are cured from any imposter syndrome you might have.
	▲	zos_kia 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I think that's actually an interesting feature of society as a macro system. It is very fault tolerant, which is frustrating for any power user but without which the system as a whole would not function at all.

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yndoendo 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There is plenty amount of incompetence in FAAMG. Notepad ....

Do Europe financial institutions have the same level of corruption as the USA? Such as a credit card company authorizing credit card transactions with incorrect expiration date to maximum profit, Bank of America? Or opening new accounts without consumer consent, Wells Fargo?

	▲	roysting 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's a broad question, but in many ways, very clearly yes, re. corruption of financial institutions, and to a far greater extent in many, albeit different ways. Incompetence and corruption only slightly overlap in most cases, i.e., being competent at corruption is a very real thing. The incompetently corrupt, usually end up punished... and there are few and far between...as we all very well know. The kind of schemes you mentioned are generally not going to be how "corruption" will manifest itself in European financial institutions, because although it is also difficult to speak in general across Europe since the EU has not yet subsumed democratic self-determination all across the continent yet, so there is wide variation; the competent corruption is largely in the form of money laundering and tax evasion, not lower level quantitative schemes that would quickly come to light because Europeans are also a lot more cognizant of money and value than Americans, so people are paying attention a lot more closely and will raise hell over a single cent, where Americans are known to have hundreds of dollars draining out of their pockets every month just alone on recurring payments for things they don't even use anymore and don't bother dealing with it. What we all don't really seem to internalize as a human species, is the absolutely demonic type of pernicious nature of "banking", i.e., a kind of LotR, ring, that consumes you especially if you are weak... and human, or at least European civilization seems to frequently go through periods of immense weakness where things are going springily and everyone is dancing to the music the "bankers" are playing as they are pandering our pockets, and when they realize they could get away with that and all the pockets are plundered, they move on to plundering our homes, then our accounts, then they want to take our first born... "Banking" is like humanity's cocaine, the seemingly innocuous, feel good drug that will consume your soul if you do not rage and fight against that demon taking over aggressively. It's no coincidence that cocaine is so widely used by the most parasitic elements of European societies, especially in "banking"/finance in general.