Seriously why does it take “3 to 5” business days to take the money from my account when it’s all handled electronically?
In: 294
Because banking payments between different banks aren’t just messages that get sent back and forth like emails or text messages. The (current-old) system is set up in such a way that banks ‘batch’ their transfers to different banks and send them to a central processing entity several times per day at set hours for all banks. That central entity then unpacks those batches, and packs all the different transfers for the same bank together into new batches that get sent to the banks at other set times. It is then up to the receiving banks to input those batches into their system, and send any necessary replies BACK through a batch to the central entity before it goes back to the original bank. Most of these banking systems also don’t work during weekends or holidays.
That system works just fine…. It’s just slow, since a payment made at the end of the day can take up to two business days before you get a confirmation of the payment, depending on how fast everything gets processed.
It’s why there’s a concerted effort to move to a instant payment system between banks, but it’s real hard to make sure this all works at the same level of certainty and security, Europe is getting there. Some banks allow you to make a limited amount of instant transfers per x time, others ask for a small fee for every instant transfer.
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