why do banks not process your payments on the weekends? For example, if I make a rent payment on Friday, the money isn’t withdrawn from my account until Monday. If it’s all electronic, why can’t they process it the next day?
In: Technology
It depends on the country, payment infrastructure of that country in conjunction with the regulation that governs the risk appetite of payments. In some countries, payments are processed between certain times (known as cut-off times) in other countries, with more advanced payment infrastructure, they have evolved to immediate payments (aka real time payments or pay and clear or instant payments) – which means payments are made immediately (a debit and a credit) 24/7. In addition, some countries have ‘electronic’ payments, however, the payment is not processed straight through – meaning there are people that man the payment rails. This is important because it means that these countries and their banks would then need resources to be employed during the weekend – where there is less staff should anything go wrong. Lastly, certain countries have a lower risk appetite due to money laundering – money could move too fast through the system to catch, which is why certain countries actually put a hold on ‘immediate payments’ (hold the payment for up to an hour for evaluation) . There are also several external factors that influence the risk appetite i.e. Identification, fraud prevention, country surveillance.
Latest Answers