Banks - transactions at weekends?

[soberken]

Does anyone know the reason why banks don't allow transactions at weekends to show in your account.

For example, get paid on 1st of the month, it's a Saturday so payment doesn't hit account until the Monday.

It's not a problem but I'd just like to know why because every other retailer / person works weekend hours

It will show today but be dated Monday

If definitely doesn't show in my pending transactions today :)

We had a very awkward problem today due to this with Natwest. DH maintenance payment was due out today but we didn’t know that they don’t pay on a weekend (he had paid manually up until recently). Let’s just say his ex wasn’t best pleased when her money didn’t arrive and we aren’t impressed with NatWest.

I would blame your employer for not setting up the bank payments on time as if a credit is due at the weekend then it would normally be paid in before the due date rather than after it

Ours always goes in before not after. Our family members were all paid yesterday

If it’s paid by BACs (which costs employers money so many don’t do this) it will show up as a pending payment provided it was processed before the cut off 3 working days prior to the payment.

If it’s paid by faster payment which a lot of smaller companies do then you won’t see it until Monday (or whatever day the payment was processed for).

BACs is the superior option for employees because pending credits can be used to offset overdraft interest over the weekend (for some banks).

HotChocolateLover your dh could do a one off payment today and it would arrive within 2 hours. Standing orders don't run over the weekend but if you manually do the payment it will get paid today

It depends on the bank. I'm with Monzo and everything is pretty much instantaneous - so all my payments went out today, and if I get paid on a weekend it shows immediately

If your salary is due to hit on a Saturday then it should arrive on the Friday.

To misquote a MN phrase - you have a Payroll problem, not a bank problem!

@dementedpixie Unfortunately although we could do that, their relationship has broken down to the point that she wouldn’t give back the extra money paid on Monday. The bank have told us that if he did a faster payment today then the SO would still be paid and we simply can’t afford to be without £400.

Has the standing order left the account? If not then you could change the date on it to next month

That was for @HotChocolateLover

It's all about history of system support. Most banking transactions are run as a batch system starting at 2am. this gives 4 hours to process via antiquated cobol software systems.

If they fail before 6am, then the bank that's a 3 hour window in which the software support engineers can fix the system.

What happens us that the banks software system makes a call to the clearing house system and fetech a ginirmius file if transactions, this can take quite some time to travel across the internet.

Once it has the file the system processes it line by line, so a bank with have a file with several million transactions to process - that takes a bucket load of time.

If a record is corrupt in any way, it gets dumped to a fail queue for secondary processing.

Depending on the nature of the fail it may result in a human being having to check and fix it. Now these humans nay be offshore in Chennai, meaning they will start work at 6am London time, if in the UK 9am.

Now given the cost of support staff none of this happens at the weekend.

It really boils down to antiquated software systems designed in the 80's.

Even the new startup style banks like Starling and Monza are having to face these issues, because if the integration with trad banks and clearing houses.

@dementedpixie I’m not sure tbh, pending possibly? They definitely said it was too late but DH has decided to go back to manual payments following this monumental f* up!

Could he check his online statement to see if it's left yet? If not he can change the date

Employer problem not bank

If I'm sure to be paid over a weekend, I get paid on the Friday before instead.

Standing orders can only be paid on a working day - you should be able to change the date though

@disneyspendingmoney thank you - that's the kind of information I was expecting.

How do you know that!?

@soberken

Because it's my job

Again the reason payroll systems pay in the last working day prior to a weekend or bank holiday is down to support.

The sla's should be with I the working day. Quickest way for a solvent company to loose staff us not to pay them when they expect it.

If your getting paid at the weekend or on a bank holiday then the company isn't using regulated compliant software to pay you, aka doing it on the cheap.

Tbh money transfer systems are archane and ancient pieces of sistware systems run by a few global clearing houses.

This allows garanteed connectivity between bank A's systems and Bank B's systems. Once it's got into your bank's system there's another load of antiquated systems that have to process the data.

In the main they work processing trillions of lines of data daily.

This has to be done prior to start of business and the call centers opening for everyone and it has to be secure.

Money may not go in on a weekend but often paying by card it also doesn't go out.

Our small business payroll system just kicks out net pay. We then send it to the bank with BACS date noted (one day before actual payment). I can put any date and the bank will use it.

I personally always make sure it goes in before the final working day. But if they use my system it would be easy to write down the last day of the month not realising it needs to be one further day to credit