My business account ATM card I don't know the PIN for because I haven't needed the PIN for about 5 years. As soon as I could deposit checks from home I no longer had any reason to go to the bank for it.

I'm sure I could get it changed... but I don't care. I don't need it. It's not an account I want to or should pull cash out of, and I don't need it to deposit, so I literally never need the PIN.

You mean depositing cheques by post?

Was a new thing?

Five years ago?

In the US?

Not by post, silly Eurotard. Electronically, from home. I love how your obsession with comparing yourself with America exposed your technological backwardness.

neil,

in ten years when you get a contactless card you're going to be really blown away!

and when someone hacks it and you have no access to your account for the time it takes to decide who is at fault you will think twice about doing all business on line.

its like the new self driving cars with no controls. great idea until it gets hacked and you are heading over the cliff and cant put on the brakes.

the time will come for all of that but not ready yet.

What does that have to do with depositing business to business checks?

Apparently USA #1 was the first country to offer remote and smartphone depositing !

This obv.
I could change the PIN at the ATM if I knew the old one. I got assigned PINs to those cards 20 years ago when I first got them and since then, I get new cards for free every 3 years, but the PIN stays the same. One time I paid for new cards but forgot the PINs within a couple month again obv.
They do issue debit cards, but since it’s a non US-bank, the debit cards don’t work in the US. And money orders aren’t a thing in the rest of the civilized world.

What they don’t do: charge me a single cent for things most people in the US pay absurd amounts of money for. 7th of the month they withdraw last months balance from my savings account and if there’s no money on there, they ask nicely to fix that. I didn’t pay anything when my account was >$10k in the red for a while after a friend used my card for his daily PokerStars reloads. It’s also the only bank that was willing to give me a monthly $20k/card limit without having a monthly income.

Mad: every US bank I’ve had has given me free replacement debit or credit cards when needed, and allows me to reset my existing card PINs.

Ray:
checks clear in the same time whether you deposit them online or at a bank branch.

Most of what you say about online banking hacking risk and responsibility is incorrect.

What % of nighttime atm deposits in the city do you think end up in robberies?

Transacting with paper checks carries more fraud risk than online/electronic banking.

Less than 1% I expect. But I was on a jury for a nighttime ATM armed robbery in Sacramento a few years ago. Withdrawal.

CW,

LOL, it's WAY less than 1%.

Have you considered getting a better job?

D, if i have a suspect check i can easily find out if the money is in his account with a paper check at my bank and can even have the funds secured. which isnt necessary for just a payment for if the person is taking something with them i want to have the money secured. with a cashiers check i can do the same for u.s. institutions.
plus none of them will have any access to my account. if i let someone direct deposit they do and fraud is much easier.
me, depositing with my phone which i dont do is relatively harmless i agree as no access to my account is given.


still try to do business with many business people or individuals for a larger amounts and try to gt them to let you direct deposit into their account without prior good dealing with them.

once a week any checks ive gotten go to the drive in window at my bank where i pass every day. every month a statement with a picture of all deposits and checks made.

i write few checks as regular things like power companies can direct withdraw on auto payment. that isnt the same as giving an individual access.

one of the players at lucky chances had his computer in for repair and after had his total savings account emptied. the bank said it was his fault as once your pin or password is compromised that is your problem unless they can catch the perps and prove you werent part of the scam. he got lucky and they caught a guy across the country.

if your banking is hundreds of dollars then why worry but for really significant amounts then it doesnt pay in my book.

and why would anyone in their right mind put deposits in a box at nightime and believe it would be safe. checks not so bad as you can get them rewritten. but cash. haha.

Fwiw, millions of US companies and individuals do this on a daily basis. With zero issues.

So, there's that.

I believe you're a legitimate old school gambler though so I can see where you're coming from and what you've been accustomed to for decades. However, that doesn't apply to the majority of non-poors, USA#1ers in this day and age.

yes i am old school and it works. i will take risks and have for large amounts when it saves me enough trouble to be worth it. but none of what i do takes any more time out of my life than doing it another way.

i dont fault anyone for their choice i just think some of the risk is not being considered as real.

Thing is Ray, if your account gets attacked, it's not going to be because of what you use to do your banking. Your account ends up on the same computers as everyone else.

Ray,

As Sak says, dealing with large sums of cash transactions with other gamblers and old-school business people, a lot of what you say makes plenty of sense.

However, for many years I've routinely engaged in high-value ECH and Wire transactions with a wide range of individuals and businesses, all of whom consider it perfectly standard.

I have used cheques but doing everything electronically is so much easier and quicker. Obviously the US could be different but there is pretty good protection/coverage if you get hacked here. The banks save so much money with people doing their banking online, it's in their best interests to keep people doing it. I did have a friend who had his account compromised and 15k was taken before he realised. He was fully compensated by the bank.

I do understand older people in particular not wanting to use it though as my parents were the same.

Imagine when he discovers that he can just do it from his cell.

I'm quite sure my aging landlord loves the fact that he can check on his cell phone, without moving off the sofa, that my automated monthly payment has reached him.

Where I live it's becoming impossible to even open a bank account in person.

rexx so your friend had his compromised. that time he got the money back. that doesnt mean its safe.

D, yes i have and do high money e transfers with title companies and such. i almost have to. and it is safe because of whom i am doing it with usually. but i never do any with someone without the credentials or i dont know. that is my point. but it is still safer in my mind to get a check to them or have them give me a check. then to have something go haywire and the money disappears and no one will refund it.

here is a true recent story. a friend did a multimillion dollar starker exchange on a property. with the largest transacter in the u.s. the money went into escrow in a bank account and escrow account. well the company used that account through their software program to trade that escrow money and millions of others dollars. and lost it all.
no one would pay and after two years of high dollar lawyers fees he got a small rebate from the bank who was at fault as well.
basically electronic transfers used his money without the oversight of a person protecting his end..
just here in a few posts there are ones about people we know getting scammed.

the average joe smo doesnt have the resources to get his money back if taken and the offending party refuses or the bank refuses to take responsibility.

Continuing the theme.

So US banks don't provide a card reader or other device (about the size of card) to generate 1-time passwords?

Lektor,

Everything that's available in the rest of the world is available in the US, because it's the US. A lot of it isn't required, though, because it's the US.