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[TenTec] international--OT

To: tentec@contesting.com
Subject: [TenTec] international--OT
From: "John, W3ULS" <w3uls@3n.net>
Reply-to: Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment <tentec@contesting.com>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 07:10:15 -0400
List-post: <mailto:tentec@contesting.com>
Rick has hit on a particular beef of mine.

For a brief time in the 90s, I was in charge of a banking industry group 
looking into consumer payments in the U.S. A number of things were 
clear, including the fact that the U.S. consumer payments system is in 
the dark ages--very high costs, large amounts of fraud, and slow as 
molasses. Au contraire, commercial (wholesale) payments using the Fed 
Wire, CHIPS,  SWIFT, etc, get done virtually instantaneously worldwide.

Rick is reporting what can be done with modern technology on behalf of 
consumer payments. Unfortunately, it's in Germany, not here in the U.S. 
The German costs--compared to U.S. consumer payments--are infinitesimal, 
the transactions are much more secure, and they are settled promptly. 
The reason we do not have the same kind of end-to-end real-time consumer 
payments is because the Fed, the credit card companies, and the banks 
have a lock on the present system, which is highly profitable for all 
concerned. The "electronic" systems in use today are verging on 35 years 
old. Over the succeeding years, the unnecessary costs of the antiquated 
systems, still in place, likely have exceeded a trillion dollars, borne 
in the end by consumers.

Please excuse the bandwidth :-)

73,
John, W3ULS
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