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0 pointsFreak_NL6y ago0 comments

You can't transfer money between banks in US Dollars within the US for free?

We really are blessed with SEPA¹.

Still, a few cents sounds at least reasonable.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area

0 comments

Most times, the financial institution will eat the ACH fee, so to the customer it looks like it's free.

SEPA also doesn't mean that the transactions are free, either. According to a third party transfer service (https://transferwise.com/help/15/paying-for-your-transfer/29...) there might still be some fees from banks.

zaarn6y ago

If you do commercial SEPA Transfers, yes there are fees. If you only do push transactions (ie, customers sends SEPA transaction to you), it's largely account management fees.

The pull transaction (SEPA Debit) isn't free, you can buy transaction packets (usually around 5-15€ per 1000 transactions) as well as paying a fee on monthly cash inflow (usually around 0.1-0.3%). Honestly, it's peanuts.

yrro6y ago

Naturally the UK banks found a way to charge consumers for SEPA payments.

smarri6y ago

SEPA can be free for customer but participating banks and payment institutions pay per transaction.

jacobush6y ago

I had this random thought, I wonder if it holds water:

The EU states are (fairly) confident in their status as independent countries, and thus dare subject themselves to and implement such things as SEPA.

While the U.S. is a single country, the states within are not independent countries and, very aware of that, try to defend their independence within the union at every turn.

pjc506y ago

I'm not sure it's the independence being defended so much as local grift of one form or another.

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