> The system works not by making it hard to steal money, but by making it easy to get back.

In other countries the system works by making it hard to steal money: I'm in New Zealand, and you can't do really anything with my account number, except pay me. Direct debit does exist, but it's a lot harder to setup (I have to send the bank original signed documents if I want to setup a direct debit from my account) to the point that I think many people don't even use it.

We still have junk like PoLi [1] which asks you for your internet banking credentials, and government departments use this.

I'm looking at you, NZTA.

Can't wait for the PaymentsNZ [2] effort to be fully implemented and widely adopted, so I can finally use real APIs to access this data, with low privilege throwaway tokens.

[1] https://www.polipay.co.nz

[2] https://www.apicentre.paymentsnz.co.nz

Oh yeah, PoLi is indeed junk, and I've also been surprised to see NZ Govt departments using it. I refuse to use PoLi, and I'll do a bank transfer or pay the debit card processing fee (if it's not exorbitant) instead.

Right, and that is why I kinda prefer the American system.... it is very easy to use and set up direct deposit and direct payments, and most of the time nothing bad happens. The few times something bad happens, it is fixed.

I'd rather take the occasional having to wait a few days to sort out a fraud charge than have to be inconvenienced every time I want to send or receive money.

In my experience it is really hard to deposit money into another persons account in America. In my home country in Europe, all I need is their account number and their personal id number and I can deposit straight from my online banking system. They don’t have to be in the same bank or nothing.

In America this is so much more complicated. I have a hard time depositing money to my partner outside of my credit union’s calling hours, even though we literally share each other’s accounts.

AFAIK, this is because criminals used to move money anonymously that way, and banks now have more of a legal responsibility to know where money is coming from.

Get yourself formally added as an authorized user of the account and you won’t have this problem anymore.

In Australia, I can send money to just about any other Australian with a bank account using an email address or phone number - and it's mostly instant. The fallback is an account number and it'll take a couple of days to go through. There's no charge for this.

Or you setup something outside bank account numbers that accomplishes that? Here in Canada we have interact e-transfers via email or text. Have yet to meet someone who doesn’t have it setup and works great and doesn’t require a bank account - only time that comes up is for direct deposit from employers Goverment ect

> I'd rather take the occasional having to wait a few days to sort out a fraud charge than have to be inconvenienced every time I want to send or receive money.

Bank of New Zealand online banking doesnt seem that inconvenient, or different, from the American system. add payee, enter amount, click pay then confirm.

https://www.bnz.co.nz/support/internet-banking/payments/addi...

Right, but my power bill, for example, is variable and I don’t want to have to manually pay it every month.

ACH fraud is not that simple to detect or revert. How soon would you know if $500 exited your checking account? If it's a small-business account, with most banks, you have 24 hours to report each debit that you want reversed. If it's a personal account, you may have up to a month. But the same merchant account can debit your account again, even while you are reversing their previous debits. You can't block them with a personal or basic small-business account, you have to upgrade to an account that you always keep $100K in.

The banks' suggestion? Close the account, open a new one, and never give anyone the account and routing numbers. Never write a check from that account. Use the bank's web site to initiate bill payments – they'll get checks from the bank's account.