Personal Finance - Cash Flow Interruptus
This post is about my recent dealings with the traditional financial system in the run-up to #lpud.
A SWIFT Delay
My dissatisfaction with the banking system began in 2017 when I was planning a trip overseas. I'd never heard of the SWIFT payment system and was surprised that my bank couldn't tell me what their own SWIFT number was.
I ended up having to visit two other banks who found their number for me. It took months of effort n dealing with moving funds around to be converted from Dollars to Euros, then back, Euros to Dollars. To say it was a massive headache would be an understatement.
Not to/ mention that I was paying fees at my German bank, German ATM's, as well as transaction fees with my bank back in America that I didn't find out about until I returned home. It was shocking to see that they were double and triple-dipping into my assets on both sides of the pond.
When I returned and learned from my bank about how they'd been dipping into my money, that's when I wondered if crypto could one day be the solution to this financial mess.
The Fly In The Ointment
So, keeping all of that in mind, we enter the now in the run-up to #lpud. I'd just gotten a new card and had to update it with the places I use for online transactions. It seemed as if everything would wrap up in time for me to buy the LEO I needed to qualify. That was not however, to be the case.
So I login the day before and note the expected date of funds arrival and everything looks OK. On the actual date, I see a warning that the funds transfer had been delayed with no reason given. #lpud came and went with no resolution.
At least I had 30 LEO that I could power up and I did so. But this was yet another crack in the much-vaunted foundation that the traditional financial system is built on.
I firmly believe that innovations on the blockchain will allow us to displace this broken system where our funds are held hostage. There's got to be an easier way and I'm convinced that we'll innovate our way around this problem, and free our resources to work for us.
Please check out my recent posts:
Image Credit: [1] @EverNoticeThat Created using Canva
It may cost more than buying foreign currency at a bank, but it may also be easier to acquire foreign currency at a service such as Travelex. (I would have also suggested Thomas Cook, but that company went bankrupt during the first few months of 2020 after many decades of service.)
In many ways, cryptocurrency exchange has many similarities to foreign currency exchange. From your post, it looks as if blockchain technology could be key to improving foreign currency exchange as a service. Stellar (LUMENS) may be the leader in doing this, but maybe more needs to be done to make trading dollars for euros or pounds and vice versa easier for both client and service provider.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
What shocked me was that my bank didn't know their SWIFT number. It was one thing for me not to know it as I'd never heard of such a thing back in 2017. But my bank? The tellers there didn't know it.
I had to visit two other competing banks and at the second one the lady was nice enough to look it up on the net for me.
It's crazy. The funds went: Switzerland> France> Germany, then were converted into dollars and wired to me in the US. I then had to withdraw my dollars (in Germany, incurring numerous fees) open a German bank account and have them converted back into Euros. The process was reversed when I was ready to go home.
You couldn't just walk into a German bank either. I had to make an appointment two weeks in advance. as we were turned away when we first tried to walk in (they said it had to do with potential terrorism, and they were surprised that you could just walk into a US bank without an appointment). No one had told us international students about this.
Germany's a great country though, I'm glad I got a chance to live there!
source
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I wonder if your experience would be the same anywhere else in the EU. I also wonder if it would be different outside the EU in countries such as Switzerland or Denmark.
While it's understandable that there would be concerns about terrorism, does it need to be a worse experience than pulling teeth to exchange one currency for another?
Blockchain must be able to provide a solution to this problem, even if it does not involve cryptocurrency. If cryptocurrency is involved, even better.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta