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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.
Brasil enters the chat
No fees transfer takes seconds, as long as it’s not international. People use it for buying groceries, clothes or paying for whatever they buy in the middle of the street from other people who are not businesses. Confirmation of payment from receivers end is immediate with a push on your phone.
All sellers can produce a QR code including receiver address and price to be payed. All bank apps scan and pay seamlessly.
Quite similar to India’s UPI system
Russia enters the chat.
Same. It is done with National Payment System of Cards law, which people usually call “MIR cards”. It started as replacement system for visa and mastercard, but evolved into System of Fast Payments/Transactions.
You can use it in three ways: enter recepient’s card number, enter recepient’s phone number or use qr code.