why we still have “banking hours”

423 viewsOtherTechnology

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)

In: Technology

25 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

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”.

You are viewing 1 out of 25 answers, click here to view all answers.