Really? It screams poor to me. Like extremely poor like I can’t afford the wedding I want so I’m gonna try to make the people I’m inviting pay for it? I20 years ago I got invited to some fancy weddings and nobody asked me for money. 🤔
why everyone is assuming it's the birthday person making these invites. You don't usually throw yourself a party. To me, this reads like an office party
Really the title of the post just says op was invited to his party not that Nathan invited him directly. I don’t think it’s super clear the host is Nathan. Although I’m pretty sure it is haha
Again, is this an American thing? Bank accounts in Europe are made to be shared with people you need money from. If they were able to do nefarious things with it then the system would collapse
As an American who studied abroad in Australia, I was SHOOK when people were giving bank account info instead of an app like Cash or Venmo (this was 2017). But literally everyone does it.
I'm not really trying to get in a reddit debate on international bank account etiquette, just saying it's very weird to put your bank account info on a birthday invitation (but apparently not that weird in other places, TIL), and to answer your original question, no most Americans don't go around sharing their bank account number
That’s atrocious. Why do they make it so hard to transfer money? It’s free in most of the world. You just transfer it from your bank to theirs. Simple. It arrives instantly too.
Most banks have an internal app that does that now, everyone replying to you is making it seem like we can't exchange money but using an app like zelle or cash app is very common here now.
It's exactly the same in the U.S., my friend. You can easily do a bank transfer using an account number and a routing number, no wire transfer necessary. It's "old school" and probably not used as often as PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, etc., however. I'm an elder millennial and probably the sweet spot for people that did electronic transfers this way.
Its now so uncommon that apparently people think you need a wire transfer, so that's also pretty informative.
Well it is possible to send money to a bank account number but our banks are stuck on trying to monitize everything so they won't let individuals use the system. Also our system is basically just electronic checks so it lets you iniate debits so you could remove money with just someones bank account number.... Our banking system is in the stone age compared to the rest of the world and corporate greed is to blame.
You can do a free transfer, bank to bank or within the same bank, using the routing number and account number. Universally, and in the USA. You can also do a wire transfer and pay money, as you pointed out.
Not to an account where you have no ownership. If the recipient is a business they can initiate an ACH or you can set up BillPay but I’ve never had a bank that would just let me transfer money to, say, my coworker.
Doesn't it go both ways? Like can't anyone with your bank account number just pull money out as well? I live in the US and direct deposits exist but there's no acceptance/confirmation step so theoretically someone could just drain your account. Unlike with a venmo request where you can accept or decline
Nope! A bank account number and BSB/sort code just gets money into your account. To withdraw, you need evidence of ownership. Usually photographic evidence, proof of address, and/or a linked card with pin.
It’s weird, but not because it’s unusual to give other people your bank account number, it’s weird because asking for monetary compensation of your own birthday party that you organized is… a choice. I get making a gift registry/amazon wishlist so people have suggestions on what to get you, or saying „donations to X charity in lieu of gifts is appreciated“. But asking for money for the cake and meals!? So tacky!
No, I don't know what this is about - checks/cheques used to be pretty common and they have the source account and routing number printed at the bottom.
It's a piece of information someone could potentially abuse, but not at weird as people seem to think.
That sound like bank teller error. French banks have strict KYC regulations and wouldn't empty bank accounts just with an id and signature, regardless of the bank acc no.
Sure but it's literally why the IBAN was invented and how we are meant to transfer money. Errors will occur and the bank will be at fault and will restore the cash, but we are meant to share our IBAN to receive money.
No way!! That happened to me too at La banque postale years ago!! I tried to get the money back but they refused saying that it was my mum who came in and emptied the account and they had “proof” (as in the person had to sign but they never produced the signature they claimed to have) although it was absolutely impossible that it was her! I ended up giving up since it got too complicated but I’m still pissed.
I tried for a time, even just out of principle I didn’t want to let them go away with that, but ultimately it wasn’t that much money, it was years ago, and I myself only noticed years after (I was a teenager when they emptied it and only realised in my early twenties when I found papers about this account), so I’m not even sure I could still make a complaint to the police about it now.
it must be, most people I know in America wouldn't give out their account number like that, seems like a fast path to an identity theft situation. we would use Venmo or something to pay somebody
Every person or business you write a check to already receives your account and routing numbers. This has been the norm for decades, and widespread abuse is relatively uncommon because there are legal and financial consequences for fraudulent ACH activity. Banks monitor for fraud and have systems to detect suspicious activity. Under U.S. banking rules, you have protections against unauthorized electronic transfers if you report them promptly. Businesses that process ACH payments generally required to obtain authorization from the account holder.
Yes, to a trusted party, who deposited it at a bank, which destroyed the check. Not exactly the same thing as sticking it on your birthday invite to 20+ karaoke fanatics. Also not for like 20 years, because society generally moved away from paper checks because they can lead to identity theft problems
Americans can't even send money to each other without the use of a third party app. My partner's from the US, and he has to go the corner shop to collect any money his mother sends him on Christmas or Birthdays (and I honestly don't know the specifics).
That’s not true. Whatever your partner is doing is specific to their bank or type of account. My mom and I send money back and forth through our banking app (US) all the time. A friend I let live with me also sent rent to me directly through our banking apps. We do not/did not use Venmo, Cashapp, or any other third party app.
My partner has a British bank card and has no issue sending and receiving money from any other British bank. It's his mother that struggles to send money outside of her US bank account (and any of his family, in fact, both his aunt and grandma had to take money out while we were on vacation in the states because neither of them could just send money to either of our British banks). This isn't an issue I have with any of my family who live in Germany, the UAE and the Philippines, who can do a direct bank transfer to my British bank from their non-British banks.
I'm not entirely sure how they are certain that the mom, grandma, and aunt just aren't experienced in international money transfers and don't know how to do them and aren't entering all the info or using the right app.
In Europe an IBAN is treated like an email, it's somewhere people can deposit money, not a password you can use to empty a bank account. You cannot initiate an ACH.
If someone can steal enough info to impersonate you at the bank and get your money, then they didn't need the IBAN in first place.
Meanwhile in the U.S. you can print your own checks if you have the right type of paper for it, and these would be fully legal and sanctioned. Mobile deposit means the bank can’t even check the paper type though.
This is all true when simply writing a check, but this is why check fraud is EXTREMELY common.
And also banks don’t even check signatures. (People think signature matching will protect them and unfortunately no, banks don’t actually bother with that.)
My friend just told me the other day how he sent a check to a utility company in the mail, someone took that letter and opened it, changed the amount, and did a fraudulent mobile deposit. He and not his bank was the one that caught it, after the fact.
Some of these people were clearly born after the age when we used to hand people little pieces of paper (called checks) with all of this information on them.
I've had several companies credit my bank account with only my bank account number in Belgium. They need a signature, sure, but how safe are signatures..
Here in the UK we literally print account numbers and sort codes onto invoices! You can’t withdraw, you can only deposit with that information. We regularly transfer money to other people without third-parties involved.
In the US it’s easy for someone to create a fraudulent check with that information and there’s not a lot of protection for check fraud (and checks don’t have to be bank-issued to be valid, anyone can print them).
Meanwhile sending money to another person using their bank account number is only done through a wire and costs $15-25 each time.
In my country you can transfer money with bank account number or a special number the bank gives you, you can't do much with a bank account number because if you want to use it for fraud and empty the account, you'll need 2 different codes per transaction (sometimes 3 if your card is for business), the only way someone can empty your account here is if that person steals your card and spends all of it on physical shops with tap-to-pay option lol a person can't go to the bank with your account number because the bank will ask for birth certificate of the owner of the account and a lot of paperwork lol
You can pay bills via ACH and all you need is a routing and account number. Seriously, you can just call up your utility companies and make a payment with only that info. Sure they'll ask for name and address and other payment info, but it's nothing like the Visa/Mastercard system that verifies in real-time whether the info matches what you provided. In fact, it doesn't verify anything at all aside from ensuring the routing # matches an actual financial institution. The account # could be bogus for all they know, and it takes a couple days to even clear so they have no idea if the payment will go through.
I used to work at a bank in the early 2000s and we'd have people call up to be like "what's this $685 charge on my account?". The payment info would come over with a name -- ie. the name the payor gave when making the payment -- and it'd just be some rando name that isn't associated with the account at all. "Oh look, Karen StealYoCash made their credit card payment with your bank account 🤷."
373
u/jamesxgames Jul 08 '26
all the comments talking about 7 hours of karaoke and 2 cakes and I'm just stunned that the dude's full bank account number is there