Quote from: sturle on December 07, 2012, 11:35:02 AM

Quote from: praxeologist on December 07, 2012, 04:16:20 AM

I'm not familiar with European banks, so could someone please explain the implications of being able to get an account here. I don't quite get what SEPA is or what the big deal of having IBAN numbers is.

Anyone in Europe (the civilized part) can transfer Euro to you for free or minimal charge. You can do the same the other way. SEPA transfers are quite fast. The regulations say maximum D+1 (banking days), and in my experience same day transfer is quite common if you send early. D is either the day you issue the transfer, if you do it before an afternoon deadline published by your bank, or the first bank day afterwards.

SEPA bank transfers are not harmed by weird USAnian regulations which forbid you to send money where you want (e.g. to companies with relations to Cuba). Some bank I tried for one day refused to send money to Intersango because of some issues with an USA based intermediary bank, and I guess you must have a lot of these problems if you are trading all over the world. (I filed a complaint to my national regulators. The bank called me the day after with a lot of excuses and sent me a compensation because they hadn't specified the restrictions imposed by the intermediate bank in their terms of service. Tried the bank once due to free international transfers, but I would rather pay a fee than cope with unreliable service.)

So, SEPA sounds like a fast ACH. Most people in the US don't know what ACH is though. If I say to a European customer, "The best method to pay me will be probably making a SEPA transfer; here's my IBAN number.", are they going to know what I am talking about and not be reluctant to do it?

The FATCA stuff is scary and I expect it to be a problem once davout looks into it. I guess it is too early to say what us US people can do with this and I feel I will need to have some real presence in Europe by making a real company there. Right now, the only credit card processor I can get without huge % fees only takes US cards so it is so hard to get international payments and most people don't want to pay $10-20 Western Union fees for a $100 order.