As part of a real estate transaction I’m currently undertaking, I need to transfer a sizeable sum of money from my bank account to someone elses account at another bank. This needs to happen as soon as possible to ensure settlement takes place on time.
We all know how slack banks are at processing personal cheques – they can take 5-7 working days to be credited to your account. I’ve read reports that describe the process of clearing a cheque … and the conclusion they came to was that the only reason banks deliberately delay this process is so that they can make millions out of the money held in the cheques while “in limbo” after the funds have been debited from your account but not yet credited to the destination account. Or something like that.
You would think a bank cheque – drawn against the bank itself (ie. it’s NOT going to bounce) would be able to be cleared pretty much immediately. It used to be the case – either same day, or else at worst the following business day. Not so any more … 3 days – 3 BUSINESS DAYS to clear a bank cheque. What the !?
You’d think with all the millions of dollars banks spend on technology each year that they would be able to advance the processing time for these types of things – but no – they actually make them slower !! Considering there is no realistic alternative for transferring sizable sums of money from one bank to another – it seems like they can do what they like.
Actually – there are alternatives to bank cheques which are quick to do – but they cost a LOT of money. Fine if you are talking millions of dollars worth of transfers – but for smaller sums of between $50K and $100K it’s simply not worth it (unless you are really really desperate).
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