Want to pay your bill Friday night? Too bad, the transaction will go through Monday morning.
In 2024, why, its not like someone manually moves money.
EDIT: I am not talking about BRANCH working hours, I am talking about time it takes for transactions to go through.
EDIT 2:
I am NOT talking about send money to friends type of transactions. I’m talking about example: our company once fcked up payroll (due Friday) and they said: either the transaction will go through Saturday morning our you will have to wait till Monday. Idk if it has to do something with direct debit or smth else. (No it was not because accountant was not working weekend)
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Banks best customers are other businesses, not personal banking. I know you want to go deposit your $100 grandma gave you for your birthday (thanks grandma!) but thats just part of what a bank does overall, though this outwardly appears to be who “the bank” is to many average consumers, but their big business doesn’t happen with you depositing grandma’s gift at the bank branch
They really are open the same time as other businesses, which generally means daytime hours 9-5 type work, as those are the customers they care about serving the most. They don’t really need to spend extra money, time, and such operating long hours. Plus many personal banking tasks can be done online or at ATMs. For their own employees most banking employees, in branches and not, are white collar professionals who expect to work fairly standard 9-5 business hours.
That said, many local bank branches have been increasing hours later and even offering Saturday services, which prior to 2000 would have been pretty unsual
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In Canada we have instant banking. I can even deposit a cheque on my phone and it’s in my account instantly
We still have banking hours, because the way money moves through the system (FEDWIRE and ACH) have hours of operation. ACH happens in batches overnight and fed wire is “instant”, but actually happens with sweeps, ie every 10-15 mins.
There is a proposal for realtime settlement, moving real time money between people, but its only slowly gaining steam
[https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fednow_about.htm](https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fednow_about.htm)
Edited for typos.
While in the modern day its a combinaiton of tradition/momentum, and some operational details (the systems banks use to transfer money around are old and dont run 24/7, most of banks customers are businesses that dont operate outside those hours anyways, etc); originally “bankers hours” had a very practical and neccesary justifiction.
Every day, a bank would need to harmonize their books. If /Old Mrs. Appelbaum withdrew $50, they needed to update her account to make sure it reflected the new [balance.](https://balance.In) In days before computers, this meant an actual human looking up physical records in an actual book, updating thigns as needed, checking to resolve conflicts, refiling the books/paper, etc. This takes time. Now imagine if you’re a bank with TWO locations in the same county. You not only nee to update *your* records, you have to harmonize them with your *other* branch’s records. Otherwise Old Mrs. Appelbaum could withdraw hewr last $50 dollars from your branch this afternoon, and withdraw that SAME $50 from your other branch first thing in the morning. So now you have to close out all your records and align them with other banks records. And this is just for simple withdrawls/deposits. If there are transfers, payments made, money sent between banks, etc etc etc. A lot of that stuff NEEDS to get sorted out Every. Single. Day. And that took time. So they would cose relatively early, do all their accounting paperwork to be ready for the next day, and head home at a more typical “quitting time”.
In India, all bank accounts can be linked to an unique ID. It’s called UPI. You can send money to that ID and the money gets transferred instantly.
It’s not a thing in many Asian countries, like China, Taiwan, India, Singapore. Pay bills 24×7, no real need to visit the bank.
Banking system in North America is archaic and it’s by design. SO many unnecessary jobs being saved.
That depends in the type of transaction, as people explained already, but in some countries there are already banking systems that support payment at any time. In Brasil, we have a national system called PIX that is like venmo, but is not a separate app it’s in your normal bank account app.
This is true in USA and Canada where ACH is still a thing. Countries within SEPA have instant wire transfers.
The issue of shortening the settlement time for financial transfers (which is another way of describing OP’s inquiry)has been under discussion for many years. Playing the float , as it it is called, benefits the banks and now the credit card companies.
Even the advent of computerized money transfer systems has not served to be a sufficient impetus for change
There has been a consumer oriented set of reforms that have been proposed in various forms gong back to, as I recall the early 1980’s all of which have been successfully resisted. Elizabeth Warren has been in the forefront of advocating the changes, but institutional inertia and politics have prevented meaningful change.
That addresses Why. The way to change it lies, as it always has, at the ballot box.
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