I was tryna cash out my earnings through Flex Pay in the Uber Driver app, which essentially just desposits my earnings automatically into my bank account. No human necessary. So why must I wait until the weekend is over to receive the money, just because it’s not a business day, but it doesn’t even require a human to do it for me. Since when do computer systems need days off?
In: Technology
The simple answer is that a lot of systems which are needed to give you your money were not meant or built to be used 24/7. In the case of banks (which your transaction is handled by) it is done by means of a batch process. Banks are not primarily concerned with innovation, but instead prioritize reliability. Changing the batch processes to instant payments is therefore something they would like to do, but they will only do so when the reliability can be guaranteed.
Handling of transactions between different banks, at least in Europe, is not done by the European Central Bank in the weekend. The system which handles these transactions, TARGET2, is just not processing any batches. The underlying reason however I cannot give you.
The answer is therefore “simple” in the sense that the app you are using might support instant payments, but all other systems (your bank, the bank of Uber and the relevant central bank) also need to support the same speed.
It depends on how the payment or transfer is being processed. The money is in Uber’s account at their bank, and since lots of people need to get paid very frequently, they probably batch these transfers through something called the Automated Clearinghouse (ACH) system, and at least in the U.S., I think these are mostly queued up while the sending institution is open and then processed overnight. A lot of direct deposits will have timestamps at like 3 AM for this reason.
Technically, most transactions work this way. At my bank, for example, using your debit card on a Saturday will update your balance automatically, and the date on your statement will show it was initiated on a Saturday, but technically none of the transactions from the weekend actually post until Monday night. This means that if I go negative over the weekend, I can make a deposit on Monday and they’ll apply the deposit to my ledger before my earlier payment is applied, so I don’t get an overdraft fee. Uber probably operates the same way with a sweep account–all the payments you and others initiate trickle in over the weekend, then on Monday they’re all paid out at once.
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I have an online account that does most of its upgrades and maintenance sometime on the weekend. Come Monday you have to turn it off and on again to let the updates download so it will work. I assume other systems may do the same.
This is incorrect. I’m an Uber driver, and you can cash out into your bank account instantly, up to 5 times each day.
Here is a question. Would you prefer a world of pure automation or not?
Ask yourself that and then do this ELI5 again.
If the question involves banks, the short answer is that their IT systems were designed way too long ago and traditional banks are lazy leeches. It works for them the way it was done in the 80s and any effort to make something better takes a decade to happen.
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