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This is really a user interface problem. Payment systems have distributed state machines, but the state isn't exposed to the customer and the parties may not be in sync. Banking is a "consistent eventually" system, with delays in days.

The customer should be able to query "what happened with this transaction" from their account and get back a graphic of what's going on. That information is useful to fraudsters, though; some states are more vulnerable than others.



Banking is a "consistent eventually" system, with delays in days.

But why does it work within the same day (or partially virtually instantenous) with SEPA payments 1) between banks in different European countries?

Why isn't there such a thing as IBAN 2) outside of Europe, which really helps to make bank transfers seamless and unambiguous?

It sometimes seems that regulation and standardization is not such a bad thing.

  1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area
  2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bank_Account_Number




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