If you can pull money out of almost any ATM why can you not deposit money into almost any ATM?
In: 210
The biggest answers are fees and fraud: It’s about trust. All the bank machines share a network or networks including service agreements and settlements of fees/balances. Internally your bank knows everything about you. Externally they only know the account information on the card. In the foreground millions of dollars move in millions of transactions. In the background, the banks don’t make an individual transfer for every transaction. They wait and tabulate a whole day/week/whatever amount of transactions – and just pay the balance back and forth. Bank A has 100 withdrawals averaging 100 dollars from bank B. Bank B has 200 withdrawals averaging 100 dollars from bank A in a given day. Instead of 300 back and forth transactions, they just add them all up, and the excess ~10000 dollars are sent from A to B after the fact. A and B charge each other fees for participating in the network, and those fees are passed on to the customer. In the case of deposits it’s a lot more labour and risk counting the deposit.
Withdrawal from external bank:
External bank: Hey Foo’s bank, Foo’s account is requesting Bar number of dollars. They have Foo’s card and Foo’s PIN. Foo’s bank: Give them the money, we’ll square it away in 3 days. IOU fees to facilitate the transaction.
Transaction at internal bank:
Internal bank machine is designed and scrutinized by internal bank to meet the security and verification requirements such that a deposit meets their risk level. Other bank does not necessarily meet those levels. Deposits are verified before allowing the funds to be released to the customer (depending on client risk analysis, this may be a ‘feature’ to allow you access to your deposit right away. In reality they are still holding the funds somewhere, but are loaning you your own money until the deposit is verified.
Deposit at external bank:
Hey, Foo’s bank… Foo wants to give you this. //crayon drawn cheque of eleventy billion dollars//. Foo’s bank: I don’t trust you read that cheque correctly, and I’m not willing to pay you to verify it. Tell them to come to Foo.
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