@dzamir the part I’m complaining about with this is that „you can now send wire transfers from the mobile app“ is a new feature in the app in 2024.
While wire transfers exist it seems like the banks almost hide it in their interface. And they are usually expensive. There is a different transfer type (ACH) which theoretically works but can take days to arrive.
@dzamir attached is the interface of the mobile banking app now. There is 4 different ways to send money and the 5ths (ACH), the one you probably want because it’s cheap, isn’t even listed.
1: somehow transferring money between your accounts is separate from the others. Of course only for your BofA accounts. Why?
2: Zelle is BofA‘s own alternative to CashApp, Venmo etc. It works well, but is a service on top of the other infrastructure. It’s for sending money to people not companies.
@dzamir
Cont Zelle: You need the recipients phone number to send them money. And they can only associate one bank account with that phone number. I tried to send my landlords the money for rent that way initially and it ended up in the wrong account for them so they asked me not to do that.
Bill Pay is supposed to be for paying bills. So it kinda is for companies. I’ve never used it because everyone I try I end up in the screen below where you add the payee.
@dzamir
Cont Bill Pay: When you click on Company in the screenshot below you get a search screen where you search for the company by name. How can I be sure that I got the right company that way? And you can’t tell me a big company has only one account.
And when you choose on from there you still need to enter an account number. Why then even choose the company before?
@dzamir
The last option is Wire Transfer which is the standard in the EU.
And that works and I believe usually arrives within the next business day but if you don’t have a premium account it’s expensive. The interface basically tells you to only use it for important official transactions like buying a house.
@dzamir and the only one you can set up for recurring payments (eg pay rent every month) is Bill Pay which is complicated to set up (see above).
And it you used it to pay a regular person, instead of just transferring the money to their account it sends them a paper check to their address every month and you can just hope that it doesn’t get lost in the mail, they actually get it, they remember to cash it etc.
@dzamir so the way I actually pay rent is that I have to remember to manually make a transfer at the end of every month. And I do so by clicking on the „Zelle“ card but then not entering the phone number but entering the Bank of America account number of my landlord, which also works somehow and then makes it go to the right account.
In the EU this would simply be a single screen not 4 different options, none of which work well.
You’d just enter the IBAN of the recipient (which btw has a checksum built in to detect typos) and the he amount and be done. It‘s a wire transfer that arrives the next business day at the latest (but often within seconds) and it’s free.
And there is a checkbox somewhere to make it a recurring transfer and execute it according to some scheduling pattern.
@designatednerd@cocoafrog I was bemused at why everyone in the US talked about Venmo/CashApp so positivity. I couldn’t understand why it wouldn’t just be simpler to transfer money from their bank accounts. Then I found out…
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