Payments between Banks

I was in a similar situation, then I opened a chequing account with the same bank that has my credit card.

Now I email transfer my payment from myself at my main bank (cost $1.50) and deposit it into my new chequing account when the email arrives (usually within an hour).

Then I do an account transfer of the amount from the chequing account, directly to the credit card, and the payment is received immediately.

The trick was getting an account with no fees (because I didn't want to pay banking fees for 2 different accounts). It took some dealing with a branch manager, but I did finally succeed. Rather, I was able to negotiate a number of free transactions before the fees kick in, something like 5 per month. Since I only pay my credit card 1-2 times per month, I've paid no fees yet.

Cheers,

I have asked that question both sending and receiving institutions several times and of course the answer is always that the other institution is at fault.
So far nobody has ever mentioned Interact or some other payment service.
The transfer times are also very inconsistent I find.
Sometimes the amount is in the other account the next day - other times it takes up to four days - not counting weekends and holidays of course.
I didn't realize the electrons that shuffle the information between banks get to rest on weekends and holidays - I hope that doesn't become common knowledge. Right now my Mac still works on these days - I can just see it - I'll turn the Mac on on Saturday morning and get a message - sorry, off the weekend, try again on Monday.

I always wanted to write to the government agency regulating banks to see what they have to say about it.
I do a fair amount of banking in Europe, everything on line of course. There payments move within the system, even between countries, by the next day. never really checked what happens on the weekend.

What I understand from my bank and I think tyhat is pretty accurate.
They (and all banks) do the transfers once a day. Some banks even specify when.
So on day 1, if you initiate the transfer before the cut off hour - say 4pm, then your money is sitting ready to be picked up by the receiving institution. If they decide to pick up at 3pm, then you just missed the pick-up and your money sits there for another day.
But absolutely worst case should be that the transfer is completed the second day after you initiate it - no longer.
It's not clear to me why nothing moves on holidays or weekends - it's not that anyone is actually physically involved in a transfer.

KC, here's the deal. If you hold a credit card at bank A, you are their asset and have incurred a liability to them. If you have money in bank B, you are a creditor and they are liable to you. Thus with interbank transactions, especially on Fridays [ a hold over from the archaic days of paper transfers ] you are on next day's business. But for the bank B, which you are a creditor, they process you claim in real time, so to not be on their books. However the other bank's transaction, which is for the credit card has a processing delay to ensure the monies are there and have cleared. This even works if you make an on-line payment to the same bank from your account to your CC.

Racket, yes. How banks control payments from customers has long been a consumer issue. What you need to do is know your bank's process method [ sometimes a painful lesson ] and adapt your payment process to it. A pain I know but until a rewrite of the Bank Act or some Consumer legislation hits we shall all be held captive.

You should try doing the same thing in US currency with Canadian banks..XX) even within the same bank.

Generally it's due to Visa being a completely separate financial institution unto itself and also I suspect due to fraud limiting.

If I transfer funds from one account to another it shows immediately.
If I transfer FROM my VISA I see the funds in my account right away but not deducted from Visa right away.
Same thing in the other direction - _ I don't see the transaction but the funds are available to use...
In the case of US funds this has led to a couple of faceplants on my part - I ended up with a $6500 credit ( like above my credit limit ) when i double paid.
With US funds it
a) does not shows up going out
b) or going in
for 48 hours so you can see how it can happen....I've complained that there is simply no way to see that transaction. It should at least show pending....




Payments between banks then just complicates the timing.

In general I have found that the CC company will always credit the interest if you ask as they know they would lose if you took it to small claims so they just roll over.

In general I've found a couple days extra does not hurt - most transactions go through the next day tho.

Long weekends are brutal.

The payments between the banks are governed by the CPA (Canadian Payments Association) check out the website, Canadian Payments Association - Home

While most of our interaction with the Banks is in real time and it's right to have the expectation that our transaction should be processed in real time, unfortunatly most transaction processing between the CDN banks are done through a batch system tape/secure FTP file exchange between the banks during the week in the middle of the night. Not many bank or banking support centres work Saturday or Sunday night or the night following a bank holiday, boy could you imagine the fees on your checking account if they did?!!!! Yes you would expect that this is very automated because they have built the front end to be that way but the back end processing is still very manual.