Why does it still take 5 damned days for a transaction to "clear" when I move money from one account to another? Has anyone actually ever challenged any banks/building societies to justify this delay?
It depends on your institution and the type of currency involved. For example, the Royal Bank of Canada allows you to instanteanously wire cash to other client of RBC (via a web page even).
Then again stuff like Credit card and what not, go through this humoungous worldwide database... which I can only imagine is one massive flat text file. But I'm surely wrong =).
And finally, when you wire stuff between two banks, you have to basically have a period where *if* the source bank bails out of the transaction, and the destination bank has already used the cash, there is no floating cash debt - in the end, you have to remember cash is not electronic, there still is the money involved.
A bigger question. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A bigger question. (Score:2)
Then again stuff like Credit card and what not, go through this humoungous worldwide database... which I can only imagine is one massive flat text file. But I'm surely wrong =).
And finally, when you wire stuff between two banks, you have to basically have a period where *if* the source bank bails out of the transaction, and the destination bank has already used the cash, there is no floating cash debt - in the end, you have to remember cash is not electronic, there still is the money involved.