To not understand how on earth it can take 4 fucking days to clear a cheque?

[AndyWarholsBanana]

I went to bank in my lunch break on Monday to pay in 2 cheques from my parents - both were for £50, one for my birthday and one for our anniversary, There was a huge queue so a member of staff was wandering round encouraging everyone who was paying in money to use the deposit point which I did.
I got a balance today and couldn't see any record of this being paid in. I spoke to someone on the counter and they told me that a) one of the cheques was recorded as being for £27.50 and that b) it wasn't showing on the statement because cheques take 4 working days to clear.
I don't get how it can take seconds to email or fax someone anywhere in the world or wire money into an account instantly but cheques still take this long to clear.

I couldn't agree more. It's a hangover from the days when these things were sent by post, though with that sort of time scale you have to wonder whether they transport the things round the country on foot. But basically all they need to do is to have someone check that the person who sent the cheque has enough money in the account and then do an electronic transfer. They can't even claim to be so inundated with cheques that this is hard to do, the volume of cheques these days is a fraction of what it was even 10 years ago.

Because its not just your bank that's involved, its the issuing bank as well.

IME though your balance usually gives you 2 figures, one which would include the cheque money & one which wouldn't that's your 'available as now' balance.

You know when you paid the cheques in, did you get a receipt that confirmed the value of the cheques?

They still send cheques from the receiving bank to the issuing bank, which could be the other end of the country. That's why it takes ages. Until that process is digitised it will continue to take ages.
You have to be careful using the automated deposit points, they don't always read the value of the cheques correctly, it's happened to me before. They should always issue you with a receipt including a copy of the cheques so you can query any discrepancies.
It's much easier to transfer money online, but the older generation (including my parents) tend to prefer cheques.

Have we slipped back in time?

Apparently they sit in a tray for a few days, doing nothing. So I was told by someone who worked in a bank.

This is what annoys me about cheques is they say 3\4 working days buts it more like a week as they don't count the day its put in or weekends I rarely get cheques but I too can't see why it should take so long in this day and age!

Its a hang-up from days when paper was physically delivered all over the country to facilitate clearing. It could be quicker now but isn't because it would require cross-industry collaboration and cost lots and its hard to make a business case for that when cheques are a declining industry.

But there was a government consultation earlier this year on cheque imaging - which could lead to much of the process being digitised and sped up. I suppose its a case of watch this space.

Each individual banking corporation has a different IT system (some of them so decrepit that they're held together with sellotape and rubber bands) so having cheque-clearing between them sounds pretty straightforward in concept is not so simple in reality. Nothing is going to change now that cheque-writing is declining.

It can take a couple of weeks where I live - i'd not complain too loudly if i were you

I thought it was because of this: The money will be immediately debitted from your parents account- (if they check their bank account the money will have come out). Then I thought it sits in the banks holding account for days (earning them interest or being used to finance things) and then the money gets paid to you. So if every cheque is held for 3-4 days the money the banks, their investor partners etc get is huge and so this is then used for their benefit.

However if you both banked at Llloyds or Santander then the money does clear immediatley.

I thought it was about discouraging us from using cheques.