On 11-10-2009 19:43, Darren New wrote:
> clipka wrote:
>> Darren New schrieb:
>>
>>> How do people who don't have computers handle sending money through 
>>> the mail, then?
>>
>> Why should they want to do that in the first place?
>>
>> In Europe (at least in Germany) it has been common practice for 
>> decades to get money to John Doe by just ordering your bank to 
>> transfer money from your account to John's.
> 
> OK, so you call them on the phone or go in person to transfer stuff? 
> Seems inconvenient.
No, nowadays simply using your on-line bank account. Earlier by writing 
a check that you send to the *bank*. And you did not even pay a stamp to 
do that, at least in the netherlands.

> We also have "money orders", where you go to the (government run) post 
> office and give them cash money, and they give you something that works 
> essentially like a check. So people who don't have a bank account can 
> still pay people who are remote.

People without bank accounts?? Are you living in a third world country?

>> I hear that in America it is virtually impossible to get money to 
>> someone else living someplace else without sending either script or a 
>> cheque via mail 
> 
> Nah. We have all the same pay online stuff you do in Europe. Indeed, for 
> businesses (rather than individuals) at least, you don't even need the 
> bank account information. You can just put down the business name and 
> mailing address, and the bank treats the transfer as if you had written 
> a check.
> 
> There's also ACH - Automated Clearing House - which is how things like 
> payroll gets electronically deposited to the employee's bank account.

I am not aware of a name for such a system here. I think that as long as 
I can remember all payroll like things were handled by banks. I.e. it 
has been virtually impossible to not have a bank account if you were 
employed or received money from the state for at least 30 years.

>> (where it can be stolen or lost, or the receiver might claim to never 
>> have received it; 
> 
> If it isn't countersigned on the back, it's not supposed to be cashable. 
> If you address it to "John Smith" on the front, only John Smith can 
> deposit it, in theory.

Although it might have been possible to give cheques to a person I have 
never done that, nor can I think of a reason to do that here.

> If they claim never to have received it *and* they cash it, you know of 
> course because the bank tells you and probably even gives you a picture 
> of their signature on the back of the check.

As said, here checks never reach a person, so this can not happen at all.

>> Not so here in Germany; even between different banks, money transfer 
>> is everyday routine.
> 
> It is here too. Not between individuals, perhaps, but online bill pay 
> isn't hard.
> 
>> The other option, which I hear is specific to Germany, is to sign a 
>> contract entitling the /other/ party to initiate money transfers from 
>> your account to theirs ("Einzugsermächtigung"/"Lastschrift"). 
> 
> We have that too. Lots of people pay recurring bills like mortgage, 
> electric and water bills, etc that way. I don't think many people do 
> that between individuals. I.e., you normally wouldn't do that with 
> someone who wasn't a large company with recurring bills coming to you.

I think this German thing is for a single time. Possibly something close 
to a credit card payment. For recurring payments we use something like 
that too. Even for the ones that may change every time.

> We have all those options. Checks are to pay the guy down the road for 
> the used bike he sold you or something. :-)

If it is a private person, I'd do that in cash. If it is a shop I'd pay 
electronically in the shop. Until a few years ago we had special cheques
that were guaranteed by our bank for €200 or so. These are probably the 
closest to your kind of cheques, except for the guarantee. If you had to 
pay more, you used more cheques. You only had a finite amount of these 
at any time, typically, 10-30 depending on your salary. The big 
advantage is that we almost never had problems with bouncing cheques. I 
think they technically still exist, but I have not seen one being used 
for 5 years or more.

> Indeed, most times, if there's a larger company, if you send them the 
> check, the first thing they do is turn it into an electronic 
> authorization for payment, meaning they don't have to handle the paper. 
> I.e., they scan the numbers off the check electronically and submit the 
> payment request to your bank, with whom they took the effort to set up a 
> contract allowing them to do that.

Again, we don't send cheques to persons or companies. They might send me 
a cheque with all details filled in. Then I only have to sign it and 
send it to my bank.

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