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It blows our hivemind that the United States doesn't use the ISO 216 paper size standard (A4, A5 and the gang).
Like, we consider ourselves worldly people and are aware of America's little idiosyncrasies like mass incarceration, the widespread availability of assault weapons and not being able to transfer money via your banking app, but come on - look how absolutely great it is to be European:
The American mind cannot comprehend this diagram
[Diagram of paper sizes as listed below]
ISO 216 A series papers formats
AO
A1
A3
A5
A7
A6
Et.
A4
Instead, Americans prostrate themselves to bizarrely-named paper types of seemingly random size: Letter, Legal, Tabloid (Ledger) and all other types of sordid nonsense. We're not even going to include a picture because this is a family-friendly finance blog.
Wait a second if the bank app can't transfer money how do they do it? Just barter with guns? Are the bullets like coins?
i just assumed people used 3rd party services for ease of use or faster transactions, seems so wild that you'd not be able to send money using your bank to me
here it takes 1-2 business day for a free wire transfer from one bank account to another, and you can do it in your banking app or on the bank's website. you just need to authenticate with your online pin code. you can also pay 1โฌ to get a <24h transfer
it's honestly much better than using a third party service, since pretty much everyone has a bank account, and pays using a card tied to that account directly
In Canada we have Interact e-Transfer. Basically all the banks colluded to make a system that allows for instant money transfer between banks using email or phone number as the recipient identifier, along with options for comments and security questions.
I felt like this was a huge step up compared to all the hoops and third party apps I had to use in Europe.
huh, yeah, i heard of similar things in the US
here it seems to be worked out through legislation though, rather than private deals, but that means it's much slower to get set in place