How to help !
How to help !
Posted Mar 8, 2015 4:58 UTC (Sun) by marcH (subscriber, #57642)In reply to: How to help ! by ersi
Parent article: A GPL-enforcement suit against VMware
There are plenty of banks in various countries that let you do [reasonably small] transfers for nothing or next to nothing. For instance I have a standing order to donate to Wikipedia, costs no one anything.
Payment systems like credit cards are designed completely backwards. Giving your numbers to all merchants and trying to keep them secret at the same time does not make any kind of sense. Then you need to spend a lot of money on middlemen to keep the system "secure" with unreliable heuristics. Mad.
Now that there more mobile phones than people (at least in all developed countries - soon everywhere), securing payments is dead simple. The system just needs to be reversed: the merchant/charity/receiver publishes a money mailbox ID. Buyers and givers connect securely to their bank and request a transfer. Problem solved. Points to secure: from thousands down to a single one: the communication with your bank, which obviously must be secure *anyway*.
The craziest of all: all this is working *already*. I am already paying or giving like this on regular basis. This only needs to be optimized and generalized, that's all. There clearly has to be middlemen not interested in making payments simpler and more secure.
Posted Mar 8, 2015 8:46 UTC (Sun)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link]
Alternatively, payment terminals which are almost all already connected could be converted to dumber pipes to let smart cards securely call back their respective home; another possible way to trigger the payment from the source.
I should just stop dreaming and putting banks and innovation in the same text. Instead let's just wait until Apple and/or Google become banks and everything will be fixed automagically.
Posted Mar 27, 2015 16:46 UTC (Fri)
by nileshtrivedi (guest, #95332)
[Link] (1 responses)
This is exactly how my country (India)'s IMPS (Instant Mobile Payment System) works. Every bank account (consumer and merchant alike) gets a 7-digit ID which you can publicise along with your 10-digit mobile number. Using these two pieces of info, anyone can make a payment through web/ATM/mobile and even SMS. Money is transferred instantly, both the parties receive an instant SMS notification confirming the transaction and this system works 24x7x365. You don't even have to reveal the bank account number!
Posted Mar 27, 2015 17:48 UTC (Fri)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link]
Neat, thanks for sharing.
As the world leader, the USA are at the cutting-edge of so many things. But when they're not, they seem to be fairly bad at shopping around and adopting foreign solutions. Not enough neighbors/too much water around? I heard the Romans were more flexible back in the day...
How to help !
How to help !
How to help !