vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
"The financial services industry, and specifically retail banking, has not always been on the bleeding edge of technological innovation.  It usually isn't, and that can be a good thing insofar as avoiding disasters, but your general sentiment is shared by many people.  Google ""payment startups"". Despite all this, the current system works well.  Software had become adept at identifying and mitigating transactions that appear fraudulent, and even if an account is wiped clean, the account holder is not responsible for the missing funds, the bank is.  If there is ever an epidemic, banks will drive the change to a different system, not consumers. Specific to your proposal, the deposit only account seems to violate all three trust-related issues you bring up. Additionally, linking a bank account can fulfill some know your customer (KYC) requirements, which help reduce fraud and may be required by law.  It gives organizations, especially financial services ones like PayPal, a more tangible link to your actual person."
No Drawbacks. One day, the bank might decide to kick you out. Typically, they send you a letter and warn that they will close it if it stays unused, and then you have to decide if you move some money into it or have it cancelled.
It is a rather complex system, but here is a rough summary. Interbank tranfers ultimately require a transfer of reserves at the central bank. As a concrete example, the bank of england system is the rtgs. Only the clearing banks and similar (e.g. bacs) have access to rtgs. You can send a chaps payment fairly quickly, but that costs. Chaps immediately triggers an rtgs transfer once the sending bank agrees and so you can be certain that the money is being paid.  Hence its use for large amounts. Bacs also sits on the rtgs but to keep costs down it batches tranfers up. Because we are talking about bank reserve movements, checks have to be in place and that can take time. Furthermore the potential for fraud is higher than chaps since these are aggregrated transactions a layer removed, so a delay reduces the chance of payment failing after apparently being sent. Faster payments is a new product by bacs that speeds up the bacs process by doing a number of transfers per day. Hence the two hour clearing. For safety it can only be used for up to 10k. Second tier banks will hold accounts with clearing banks so they are another step down. Foreign currency transfers require the foreign Central Bank reserve somewhere, and so must be mediated by at least one clearing bank in that country. Different countries are at different stages in their technology.  Uk clearing is 2h standard now but US is a little behind I believe.  Much of Europe is speeding up. Rather like bitcoin clearing, you have a choice between speed and safety. If you wait you are more certain the transaction is sound and have more time to bust the transfer.
In many countries it is a legal requirement or in some other way mandatory for the banks to ban the owner(s) of an account to allow a third party to use the account. In some countries if you willing give someone access in this way you get no compensation what so ever and you'll be lucky if they catch the crooks and even luckier if you get any of your money back. Don't forget the possibility of jail time due to the criminal activities going on under your name.
When using a debit card there are two limits that may be imposed on the use: the current balance and the maximum daily limit. If the banking institution limits your daily usage that may mean that on a particular day you may not be able to make a large purchase, even though you have money in the bank. Otherwise as long as you have funds in the account linked to the debit card you can make the transaction. The catch is that as soon as the transaction is sent to the bank one of two things happens: the money is immediately deducted from the account; or a hold equal to the the amount of the transaction is placed on the account. A hold is generally used when the transaction is done in two parts: the pre-scan at a restaurant, or gas station. The hold reduces the amount of available funds in the account. A hold or an immediate deduction limits the size of future transactions. To be able to make larger transactions you need to transfer more money into the account. There is no debit card transaction that you can do to  artificially allow a larger transaction, unless the bank is not placing a hold or doing an immediate deduction.  Because a debit card is linked to a bank account, some accounts have overdraft protection. This protection comes in two forms: they either transfer your money from another account, or they make a loan. Either way there can be costs involved.
That's exactly what happened to me except on Fiverr. I had months of activity and hundreds of 5-star reviews. I had real clients. Repeat buyers. Real business relationships.   Then one day they deleted both of my accounts (I had one for buying and one for selling). Apparently, buried somewhere in their terms of service, users aren't allowed to have more than one account. I didn't even try to hide it- my usernames were nerdi and nerdi2. They even made me wait months and submit I.D. just to be able to log in and withdrawal my earnings.  So much for that.
"First, is population density. You didn't say where exactly, but for example here in Tampa, Wells Fargo has 25 branches in the area  (though that is a bit larger then what I would think of the Tampa area as a local) Second, we can mix in service expectation. I expect that in addition to ""good"" online service, ""great"" phone service, ""great"" email service, that when I have a problem, don't understand something, or want to talk about my options for investing or choosing account types, that I am able to go into a branch. That I can ""walk in"" and see someone quickly, or schedule an appointment and see some one right away (at my appointment time).  Together, these two options means that on a busy day, the nearest Wells Fargo Branch to me has at any one time, 50 - 60 people in it. Smaller branches, of course have less, and larger branches exist. So it just takes that many branches to address the number of people and their expected needs.  As to why there are so many different brands/banks Well that's just the USA. We believe in capitalism. We have believed in it much stronger in the past, but banks are the central to capitalism so why shouldn't they serve as an example.  At it's core (a very simplistic look) Capitalism and a free market means that we as customers are better served by having lots of different brands fighting for our business. It should drive more consumer desired features  (like lower prices, higher interest rates, better fee schedules, etc.) while forcing those brands to operate ""better"". (Just ignore the bail out, that's a loaded topic) So for some of us, we want a big bank like Wells Fargo, because we want the rates, structure, and service they can provide as a ""big bank"". For others they want the more personal touch of a ""small bank"". There are benefits both ways.  For example there may be a bank that only allows people with excellent credit to open accounts. That allows they to have lower over all mortgage rates, but means their checking accounts have higher minimums. While the next bank may be more inclusive, and have smaller minimum balances, but as a result charge more for loans.  We like our options, and rest assured all those ""brands"" offer products that have differences that attract customers."
I have a visa with Scotiabank and I purposefully keep a negative balance at times. The guy at the bank said it was a great idea. I have never received a cheque, nor do I want one. The reason is that it allows me to make quick purchases without having to worry about paying back and due dates. Only with large purchases do I allow myself to do that. I still check in with my account every once in a while just to make sure everything is all right. It allows for good money management and piece of mind. I have been doing it for a couple of years and have not been penalized at all. (Wouldn't really make sense to do so though.)
Generally just giving a Bank Account Number does not cause damage. It depends on what other information the user has and the country you are in.  Generally Bank take telephone instruction for certain [non-transactional] activities , and they would authenticate you by asking account number, address, date of birth and some additional info. In today's world this info can be pretty easily accessible, for example facebook or a details posted on Jobsites etc. It is best avoided to give the bank account details, unless you are sure of the person.  Typical other misuse is using your bank account to Launder black money. The typical modus is transfer funds to you and then ask you to transfer it elsewhere. At times its also a scam and you loose money as they trick you in sending money before you receive it.
Ok, few things to understand first: Secondly, think about the way a scam usually flows. A person (scammer) with an actual bank account with money issues a valid cashiers check, trick someone else (victim) into receiving it (typically in exchange for a percent) and passing along a portion to another account (back to the scammer). The scammer then reports the first transaction as fraudulent and the bank takes back that transaction. Now the victim is stuck with the second transaction, and without the funds from the first. Meanwhile the scammer has both the original funds and the percentage from the second one. In a way they're attractive for scammers because they're so trusted.
"All of these answers are great but I wanted to add one piece of advice from someone who has been married 8 years and been in various financial ""situations."" Have one of you (whoever the two of you feel is more organized and more financially responsible) be solely in charge of paying the monthly bills, but keep a spreadsheet or some other tracking mechanism so that the other can monitor this as well. That way if you guys ever decide to switch roles there won't be much of a learning curve. Also, don't do three bank accounts. One or two is enough, more than that starts becoming more difficult to keep track of and if you have any sort of monthly fees on the accounts it also wastes money. My wife and I each have our own account and we get money for each other if necessary. She handles paying the bills but keeps a monthly spreadsheet that has all pertinent info. We have a number and color coding system to determine which paycheck (1st or 2nd of the month) the bill is paid in and whether it has been paid, not paid, or past due (green, yellow, red). Hopefully you don't ever have to see the red color :P"
-They had to use the card to make ends meet, etc. (3 kids, single parent) They ended up filing a sizable bankruptcy a few years later. This was one of the most responsible people I've ever known. (Yes that statement will seem far fetched to someone else. It was almost impossible to get them to file bankruptcy, even though there was no way to ever pay the money back.) The point? Utilization shows a more 'current' picture than some of the other portions due. - Had those banks used the high utilization as a warning sign they would have saved a lot of money. A 'fun' way of looking at credit: Sometimes I describe credit score as a popularity contest. If you really 'need' money banks are not going to help you. However if your credit shows everyone is lining up to loan you money, other banks are going to want in too. ""Banks only make loans to people that don't need them."" *** Spending a lot on Credit Cards does sometimes have the indirect effect of getting balance increases that could have a slight increase in your score. This happens less than it did prior to the financial fiasco. Also the effect of this is on the score negligible unless carrying a balance. ( And the person carrying a balance also has a lower score anyways.) Additionally someone charging less could probably get a similar raise if they asked for it. (Raises vary greatly by issuer.))"
Hits to your credit rating for canceling one of the newer cards will be a small hit for a few months.  You do have some options.  I also believe that a person with good credit should have multiple cards: I like having a cash back card for the majority of our transactions. Unfortunately that card isn't accepted everywhere, so I have two other cards with broad market coverage to make sure we always have an option if the vendor doesn't take the main card.  Also having multiple cards makes sure that if there is an issue with one card you are never caught without a card. One time the main card was rejected by a gas station because my wife just used the same account to buy gas across town. When we got home their was a fraud alert message on our phone.
I work in a bank and see these people first hand. It’s kind of sad really. They come in to open a business account. Full of excitement for this new “business opportunity”.    After a month or two of holding wine parties with their friends and family and making some sales they realize they can’t be hounding their friends and family to buy from them.   Their excitement turns to tempered optimism as they try to come up with more ways to drum up business.   After failing to do so they come back to me, defeated and close their business account. They’ll never tell me exactly why they closed, it’s always “Oh, I just don’t have time” or “I’m working too much at my regular job” but I know.   It was a scam all along.
I feel there are two types of answer: One: the financial. Suck all the emotion out of the situation, and treat the two individuals as individuals. If that works for the two of you, fantastic. Two: the philosophical. You're married, it's a union, so unify the funds. If that works for you, fantastic. Personally, my partner and I do the latter. The idea of separate pots and separate accounts and one mixed fund etc makes no sense to us. But that's us. The first step for you in deciding on an approach is to know yourselves as people - and everything else will follow.
While on a completely different scale to what you boys are talking about couple of years ago I was a relationship manager in retail banking and would on the reg have to sign away ~400k out of the tellers boxes and into the safe. After a few months of that you kind of view it as lego to fuck around with... [Australian money](https://www.google.com.au/search?q=australian+money&amp;hl=en&amp;prmd=imvns&amp;source=lnms&amp;tbm=isch&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=OquAUO2SD82ciAfSnoDgCA&amp;ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&amp;biw=1006&amp;bih=502)
I was a victim of this.  I'm not sure who got my routing and account number off my check, but someone subscribed to Playboy.com using my bank account information.  Luckily it was only for about $30 and the bank refunded my money.  However, it was a mess in that I had to open a new checking account and keep the other one open until all checks cleared.  The bank was extremely helpful and monitored the account to make sure only the checks I told them about were processed.  I then had to close the old account. This is why I believe checks are much less secure than credit cards or debit cards.  A paper check can lay on someone's desk for anyone to pick up or write the information down off of it.  I avoid checks if at all possible.  For things like Craig's list, I would try to use PayPal or some other intermediate processing service.
Yes.  There are huge disadvantages to saving money in a money market account. Money market account can be a good place to save some of your emergency fund, because it's basically a cash account and you can withdraw from it at will, with few delays.  It's liquid.
Paper trail of who did the deposit.  Less significant for a personal account, but a bigger deal for accounts that are used by multiple people (e.g. a corporate checking account).
I know an old retired Asian couple that each have 2 pensions. They worked from their teens and worked their asses off. The wife still works as a part time consultant because her second job was so specialized and she gets bored at home very easy. I saw their finances once and its just on a level I've never seen before or since. It's like they planned ~6 decades of their lives as teens and they stuck with the plan
"I know this an old thread, but one that caught my interest as I just moved to the USA from Australia. As per the OP I had never written a check in my whole life, and upon arriving in the US I was surprised as to their proliference. In Australia pretty much all bills you receive can be paid in a number of ways:  For small amounts between friends cash is probably used most, but for larger amounts direct transfer is popular. Your friend/landlord will give you their bank account number and BSB number, which identifies their bank, and then you transfer the money in. We don't have a SSN like some other countries. Cheques are still used by some however, esp by the older generations. Now that I'm in the US initially I had tried to set up direct transfer to pay my rent however the bank has a $1000 daily transfer limit. I contacted the bank to get this increased however I was informed that this limit applies to ALL accounts at the bank. I asked how do people pay their rents with this low limit and was told that most people used cheques. (This explains the strange look I got from my landlord when I asked for their bank account details so I could pay the rent!) I now have some bills to pay here and I use online banking. You enter the biller's name and address and then the bank actually prints off a cheque and posts it to the biller on your behalf! My first couple of pays here were also cheques, which were the first actual ""paychecks"" I had ever received."
"In double-entry bookkeeping, no transaction is ever negative. You only deal in positive numbers. We ""simulate"" negative numbers by calling numbers debits and credits, where one is the negative of the other. Only a balance can be negative. In this case, Income is a credit account. That means that things that increase your balance are credits and things that reduce your balance are debits. So a gift from grandma is a credit. It's a positive number, and you write it in the credit column. You pretty much never subtract from Income except to correct a mistake. Assets, like a checking account, are debit accounts. Increases are debits and decreases are credits. You routinely have both debits and credits on a checking account, i.e. you put money in and you take money out. Every transaction affects (at least) two accounts: one with a debit and one with a credit. So in this case, the gift from grandma credits income and debits checking. Buying food credits checking and debits expenses."
"I live in Kenya, and also here we have corruption. However, we use EFT, RTGS, Mobile Money and its more safe than cheques. Beware, that paper based payments cost you way more than anything electronic. Often the bank charge you for the cheque book, they charge for receiving paper based payment instruments, and settlement is often a day or two, while mobile/electronic settlement is instant. Seen from a tenants perspective, its also easier. Imagine too, the small likelihood that you loose the cheques from your tenants? Your fear for your account is understandable, but you may need to learn a little now, about how accounts are handled. In an online community only the persons with the necessary electronic credentials can withdraw from your account, being it online via your screen, or at the cashier, or by other means. Therefore, your money are safer via the electronic means. The cause of your concern / unease can be that you are relinquishing your control from a paper-based, visible system, into a system which you may not know so much about, maybe because of that you have not done so much on computers, yet. As a most recent caveat, though, don't get into the so called bitcoin technology, it is not safe, and as you saw, most recently, the very owner himself became the perpetrator breaking his very own bank by artificially inflating amounts on his own account, according to Japanese authorities. Now, electronic banking has been in existence since soon 40 years. Its based on cash, so behind the scenes, between the banks, huge deposits of cash are being moved physically, around from vault to vault, in the bank's money exchange / transaction settlement system. Thereby, a bank does not need to physically transfer money from one physical bank building to another - as they have huge loads of cash stashed in central depositories, between which they can now exchange money as compensation for cheques and electronic transfers. So, behind the scene of the electronic world, there are still physical cash being moved around, deep under the ground, in such vaults. I hope this has given you a little bit of confidence in the ""modern times"". If you have further questions, you are welcome. These were my 50 cents :-).
"The thing about the Swiss banks is that the accounts there were ""anonymous"", that's why it's such a famous example. Until not so long ago, the access to the account was by a password, and no-one knew whose account it is and to whom the money belongs. That's perfect for money laundering and various illegal activities (like hiding bribe money, stolen money, evading taxes and what not). The US pressured Swiss to cancel that policy, and now the Swiss banks are basically the same as everywhere else (there are other off-shore places that still allow similar anonymous accounts, I think). Having an account abroad is usually legal (depends on the country of your citizenship of course, I think in Canada there's no law against that, certainly not in the US), as long as you declare everything and the owners of the accounts are not anonymous, and their ID's were verified by the bank. By the way, one of the former Israeli Prime Ministers, Itzhak Rabin, had to resign his post because journalists found out that his wife had a bank account in the US. In that time (late 1970's) it was illegal for Israeli citizens to have accounts in foreign banks. Similar laws were in the USSR, and most (if not all) of the Eastern block. All of these countries no longer forbid foreign bank accounts."
"When I was in high school, my mom got me a joint credit account with both of our names on it for exactly this reason. Well, that, and to have in case I found myself in some sort emergency, but it was mostly to build credit history. That account is still on my credit report (it's my oldest by a few years), and looking at the age of it, I was 17 at the time we opened it (and I think my younger sister got one around the same time).  In my case, I now have an ""excellent"" credit score and my weakest area is the age of my accounts, so having that old account definitely helps me. I don't think I've really taken advantage of it, and I'm not sure if I'd really be worse off if my mom hadn't done that, but it certainly hasn't hurt. And I plan on buying a house in the next year or so, so having anything to bump up the credit score seems like a good thing."
"The applicants go through the same process as for any other loan.  The only difference is that the ""bank"" is people like me, perhaps 200 of us on a note.  We kick in $25 or so on each note and get the opportunity to ask the applicant questions.  The investors pay a small percentage as fees to have professionals rate the notes.  The worse the credit, the higher the interest rates the note holder recieves.  Of course if the person stops paying, we receive nothing.  Calculated risk.    I invest in high risk notes sometimes depending on what it's for and have several in my portfolio.  It's literally microlending.  I can afford to lose $25 on a risky loan or two for a 19% profit because the rest of my portfolio is diversified into hundreds of 9-11% notes.  It works surprisingly well."