In Estonia, you can link a phone number to your IBAN. When making payments, the sender just needs a phone number, and the corresponding IBAN is automatically looked up. (The lookup service is managed by the central bank, and used by all (major) banks.)

Same in Poland, thanks to BLIK payments. Works across all major banks. https://iko.pkobp.pl/iko_en/features/mobile-transfer/

There's a similar system in several country (Spain as well for example, called Bizum). It's a shame that it's not a Europe-wide system.

We have that here for Zelle, which is built-in to some banking apps, making it really easy for most people to achieve this. You can alternatively give them a name or email as well. Zelle is not perfect but I have used it often just because it is built-in to my banking. I just wish I could have multiple bank accounts hooked up to it properly, not sure how to sort that out.

The same exists in Spain (albeit with limits per month), it's called Bizum: https://bizum.es/en/about-us/

I don't think I've seen this, do you have a link to learn more?

It's apparently called “proxy payment”: https://www.lhv.ee/en/proxypayment

Interesting. In the UK we just need to share account number and sort code. These are quite easy to remember in your head. IBAN would complicate things. Is IBAN always required or only for cross-border transfers?

An IBAN is just the sort code and account number, with a prefix, so would be just as easy to remember.

However, a sort code is always presented as 12-34-56 and the account number normally shown as 1234-5678 - so it's easily chunked and very easy to remember.

You also rarely need it among groups primarily using Monzo - which among my UK friend group is universal. Just pick from contacts, just like Apple Cash.

I've also found paying strangers on Monzo to be ridiculously easy, you both turn on bluetooth and go to "pay nearby" screen. You just ask them "Are you <full name>?" to verify, then send money.

While very true, I think the point is that if you come across someone not using Monzo as their bank it’s almost just as easy to send them money.

This varies by country, but e.g. in Finland IBANs completely replaced legacy numbers in 2010.

Mine is 5 characters longer than the legacy number was (added "FI", 2 check digits, 2 padding zeroes, removed dash), for a total of 18 characters.

You can use mobile phone numbers here too (though admittedly UK account numbers are easy enough most people just use those )

Some countries only use IBANs, without some other local account identifier.

My experience with Paypal is the opposite. On multiple occasions I've had someone send me money on Paypal, but then it gets held up in checks and verification for 2-4 weeks, during which time I cannot access it. Sometimes it is instant though. There seems to be no pattern to it. This lack of certainty discourages me from using Paypal to receive payments in the future as I now consider it as a risky, slow, last-resort option.

If the PayPal transfer was funded by a credit card they’ll often put a “hold” on it until it finally clears.

In Australia we can use a phone number or email address to transfer money. It’s near instant transfer and even comes up with the full name of the person you’re sending money to.

Little cumbersome since I never bothered to get peoples phone numbers till recently.

In argentina you can set an 'alias' for your account, if you don't you get one by default... I put my name as alias, I started getting payments from people I don't know o.O

If US we use Zelle, it's a for profit company owned by the large US banks. If your bank supports Zelle, you can send money instantly.

But, it’s not nearly as popular as Venmo. I’ve never been asked to send anyone money over Zelle, but Venmo is used often. Maybe it’s a regional thing (network effects are huge here), but just because something is supported by our banks doesn’t mean it gets used.

Also, I don’t necessarily want to login to my bank app to send money to someone to cover dinner. But a secondary app, like Venmo, is fine.

SF anecdotes:

My old house cleaner used Zelle, new one Venmo. I recently prepaid for a camping trip and needed 40 parents from kids’ school to pay me back. Most used Venmo, a few used Zelle, one sent to my wife’s PayPal. Most of my friends use Zelle (and close friends and family use Apple Cash because it has the least amount of friction, once set up).

My kid in preschool has an extra sports class and music class. Both are paid by Zelle. Last month I got a haircut and the owner had a sign saying she preferred Zelle (saves 2-3% vs Cc/Square). Zelle seems to be growing amongst small businesses.

I once sent a friend who works at Square some square cash. It went unredeemed because he forgot about it. Had to resend.

I’ve only used wires when buying homes.

I use ACH to pay taxes, some utilities, etc.

StateFarm lets me pay my insurance bill with ApplePay, which gives me 2% cash back.

In short, very Balkanized with no dominant system.

I've only ever used one bank that supports Zelle (and I'm departing that bank), and I've never once heard of anybody using it.

Yes the US does have Zelle technically, but it's not really a solution at least in the foreseeable future.

"Technically?" Curious how you've even managed to avoid it, frankly – all of the largest US banks have it: Bank of America, Chase, Citi, Capital One, and Wells Fargo, as well as 1,536 other banks.

Going down this list, I don't think I've ever used a bank that didn't have it: https://www.zellepay.com/get-started

Zelle always felt to me like the banks chasing down the already-escaped cattle.

If you wanted a no-security-promises send-money-to-your-friends system, you probably already had PayPal or CashApp or something else of the sort. As far as I can tell, it's a popular fit for people who were scraping PayPal's "seriously, your selling-stuff-on-Facebook thing is a business, pay business fees" detection a little too closely.

The timing also seemed odd, with the promises of FedNow being "real soon now" -- do they intend to eventually run Zelle atop it, or is it an attempt to build an installed base (and vendor lock in) before every bank in the country can say "Well, we're all on the same network, so transfers are immediate for everyone?"

Among many reasons why exchanging an IBAN and submitting a SEPA transfer in the EU is so cumbersome is that there were at least two standards to encode those details in a QR code.

It seems that, by now, except Czech Republic & Slovakia [1], the EPC QR code [2] has won.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Payment_Descriptor [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPC_QR_code

In the Netherlands a similar app is popular called https://www.tikkie.me. Commercial banks have also implemented their own solutions for generating payment links though. See https://www.ing.nl/particulier/digitaal-bankieren/mobiel-ban....

Payment links are easier and quicker to use than manually entering details in your banking app.

Canada has email money transfers that is done via the big banks.

In Spain we have this Bizum thing that allow us to use phone numbers to send money between bank accounts. I Brazil we have Pix which is similar but allows great flexibility on how to identify one person(phone, email, random key)