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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.
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). It's often used for payroll and paying bills.
Now, we could probably make this payment system instantaneous relatively effortlessly (and thus useful for regular in-store purchases), but the banks lobby against this so they can continue to charge us fees and interest to over-use credit cards. (Interestingly enough, credit and debit cards all use direct deposit on the backend to actual transfer funds between parties).
This is all fine and dandy for most people because they simply can't imagine doing things a more consumer-friendly way.
I imagine it has also something to do with safety? Like, if it was instantaneous, that means you can do damage instantaneously, or a hacker might have fewer hurdles to go through.
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.
Ooh, cool, kinda like SEPA Instant Credit Transfer, which transfers money within ten seconds to bank accounts using the above mentioned number.
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.
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.
Your comment is all true, except - we CAN all imagine it, but as you pointed out, our unchecked hyper capitalism prevents it