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It blows our hivemind that the United States doesn’t use the ISO 216 paper size standard (A4, A5 and the gang).

Like, we consider ourselves worldly people and are aware of America’s little idiosyncrasies like mass incarceration, the widespread availability of assault weapons and not being able to transfer money via your banking app, but come on - look how absolutely great it is to be European:

The American mind cannot comprehend this diagram

[Diagram of paper sizes as listed below]

ISO 216 A series papers formats

AO

A1

A3

A5

A7

A6

Et.

A4

Instead, Americans prostrate themselves to bizarrely-named paper types of seemingly random size: Letter, Legal, Tabloid (Ledger) and all other types of sordid nonsense. We’re not even going to include a picture because this is a family-friendly finance blog.

Source: Financial Times

  • @SirQuackTheDuck
    7•7 months ago

    We have a fee-free bank-to-bank transfer system that is based on pre-digital technology that takes 2-3 business days. We often call it “direct deposit” or automated clearing house (ACH).

    Ah, right, kinda like SEPA Credit Transfer. You do need a persons IBAN which is a bit long, but their name is validated so you usually send it to the right person.

    Now, we could probably make this payment system instantaneous relatively effortlessly

    Ooh, cool, kinda like SEPA Instant Credit Transfer, which transfers money within ten seconds to bank accounts using the above mentioned number.

    This is all fine and dandy for most people because they simply can’t imagine doing things a more consumer-friendly way

    And that’s why, in the Netherlands, Tikkie took the country by storm. It is an app that allows you to use iDEAL (a web-based payment system, soon rolled out in Germany and Belgium as Vero) to send money to friends. Usually takes one pin and three taps to send it, and have it instantly appear on the account of the recipient.

    • @[email protected]
      1•7 months ago

      Spain has Bizum, which I imagine is similar to Tikkie, where you go into your banking app, and instantly send money to a phone number, usually from your contact list, that is also in the bizum system, zero fees.