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.

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 (where it can be stolen or lost, or the receiver might 
claim to never have received it; how, by the way, do you protect against 
such problems in the US?). Not so here in Germany; even between 
different banks, money transfer is everyday routine.

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"). While at 
first this would appear to be an invitation to fraud, in practice it 
isn't: You have 6 weeks time to have such a money transfer retroactively 
canceled (even if it was legit), in which case the other party will in 
turn have to pay a considerable fee to your bank. If the money transfer 
was legit, they would then resort to other means from getting the money 
from you (including the extra fee you forced them pay); obviously, 
usually only larger companies accept payment via this method due to the 
risk involved on their side, but aside from that it is quite popular for 
recurring money transfers, such as insurance premiums, phone bills and 
the like, especially if the sum to pay is not known in advance.

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