Re:How ACH works: A developer perspective – Part 2
by tomasien on Tuesday May 13, 2014 @08:45PM
(#7741557)
We initiate the transfer as well. It doesn't violate any of the banks we support's TOS. We're also not web scraping.
Re:How ACH works: A developer perspective – Part 2
by pfg on Tuesday May 13, 2014 @08:51PM
(#7741585)
Sorry, edited my comment a bit to clarify.
If I understood correctly, you use the login to verify the account information and to check whether funds are available. The transfer is initiated via ACH.
Sofortüberweisung doesn't use ACH (or SEPA), they actually transfer the money via Online banking using a bot pretending to be the account owner.
Re:How ACH works: A developer perspective – Part 2
by tomasien on Tuesday May 13, 2014 @08:54PM
(#7741599)
OHHHH that's messed up. Wow! That's a really weird thing to do, but the fact that it's popular anyway really says a lot. Still though - wow.
Re:How ACH works: A developer perspective – Part 2
by mike_hearn on Wednesday May 14, 2014 @08:17AM
(#7743281)
It's popular because SEPA transfers are really cheap, compared to paying with credit cards.
Last time I paid with SOFORT I noticed that they hadn't committed the wire transfer. KLM issued me with my flight tickets, but the wire transfer was sitting in the outbox and could have been cancelled. Not sure what happens if I cancel a payment like that - does the merchant get notified and cancel the flight tickets too?
They go a step further and actually transfer the funds from your bank account via Online banking after you provide them with your login and TAN.
Quite scary to be honest, to me at least. It's basically a scraper/bot that initiates the transfer for you, pretending to be you, without the bank's knowledge. While forwarding your login information and TANs to third parties is by most banks considered a violation of their ToS, they don't seem to be willing to do anything about it (probably because of Sofortüberweisung's popularity with their customers).