I lose track

[andrewducker]

I just had to go and check what year it is.

I blame the end of cheques* - I haven't had to actually write (or type) the year at all in months, so I haven't gone through the whole process of writing "2010" and then having to scribble it out to write "2011" instead.

*I haven't used a cheque in a couple of years. I assume my chequebook is somewhere in my flat, but fuck knows where. Last time we needed to pay builders/plumbers/etc. I just did a direct bank transfer.

Comments

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

But it's not convenient. You have to be online, on a phone or in a bank for starters. You also have to know the account number and sort code, which are not easy to remember, and I would imagine the chances of typing in either one incorrectly must be significant.

[andrewducker]

Making mistakes would be easy, I guess. Not happened to me so far - it would be nice if you had confirmation of who it was going to.

Apps for transferring money would be nice, and having a simple way of transferring account details back and forth wouldn't hurt.

I'm not too fussed by you having to be online - by 2018 everyone will be, and smartphones will own 95% of the phone market. NFC will make a difference here, too. Bump phones with someone and transfer them the cash like that.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

it would be nice if you had confirmation of who it was going to

Indeed it would. I'm sure that some people would be really, really interested in a mechanism that gave you personal details from an arbitrary bank account and sort code. :-)

[andrewducker]

Well, yes. There are clearly _good_ reasons why you don't get that.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I have set up a Western Union online account so I can transfer money to a friend in the US ... it was surprising (or not) how much personal ID I had to find before they would let me send the money.

PayPal is a pretty reasonable way of transferring money too (if you don't mind the costs and letting ebay have your personal details).

And I use telephone banking a fair bit too, for paying bills and transferring money to people. It would be good if there was a way that people could send your bank their bank details so you could just pick them off a list ("yes, I'd like to pay Andrew Ducker some money ... oh, you've got his details there ready to receive this money, excellent!") and that shouldn't be hard at all. It could even be obfuscated so that *I* would never learn your bank details but the bank could still make the payment into your account.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Realistically, it's going to end up that you can transfer money through facebook.

Of course, at this point, I'll raise the issue of the numerous friends who claim to have had their facebook "hacked". Or just have their browser remember their details, even when not-quite-friends and random people are using their phone or their computer.