AIBU to think that companies who take card payments should contact the bank immediately?

[DarthVadersTailor]

It's getting really annoying when I make a purchase on my card and it doesn't even show up as a pending payment on my account for days, sometimes even a week. I was under the assumption that the vendor contacted the bank during the transaction but apparently this isn't so.

I get there are worse things in the world to worry about but it's highly annoying when you accidentally go into minus on your account because they haven't tried to take the money yet!!!

This has always been the case. It takes a few days to process

Yes it's annoying I tend to try and remember which shops take a while to show and which don't.

Whenever I make a card payment it comes off my available balance immediately but can take a couple of days to show as a transaction. I can always tell how much I have in my account by looking at available balance.

Usually though the payment shows on my account as a payment pending, which then deducts from the available balance. Lately though some places, Mcdonalds and John Lewis being recent examples, don't even show up like this at all for ages!!!

Boots takes an extra day. It depends on the company, the machines have an end of day function on them. If that is not used them the transactions aren't sent but the value is normally held.

I quite like it as it means I can buy something the day before payday and not have the money come out til after

Tesco pay at pump do this they take £1 straight away and ignore the rest for ages.

These days the bulk of merchants who prices transactions through whatever type of electronic terminal (whither it's on the till or a stand alone desk one) actually capture the funds at the time of the sale, so you usually find that the funds are reserved against your account by the authorisation process, even if the transaction details don't show on your online banking etc, so it's worth looking at your actual available balance, if the actual transaction didn't show, as this would normally reflect a pending payment.
Sometimes things can be delayed if the outlet in question has a connection problem and the transaction might then be stored and not processed for a day or two but generally ^^ is the case.
However some cardholders's banks can take longer than others to process transactions, for example Amex and Diners are notoriously slow at processing.

In addition, some machines are still running on a system where the transactions are stored in the terminal until the banking prices is completed, and then in this case if it's not done, you may see a delay. There's many reasons it can happen, but if you see it happening often at one outlet it's worth alerting them as they may have a problem they're not aware of.

(Apologies for both long dull post and typos/huge paragraphs, posting whilst trying to iron and cook at the same time!)

I've had a couple of charges recently where they took the payment over a month later than I paid for the item (high street shops, not online) and I got shafted for not having enough in that account to cover the unpaid payment plus rejected payment fees. My bank did agree that this was unusual enough to forego the charges, but I'm generally in credit with them, so it might help if you are too. Calling up the bank might be a good idea if you have the time.

And yes, I think companies should give you a reasonable idea of when they're going to take the money out. Same-day banking doesn't actually cost companies these days, like it did 20 years ago, and the most they should expect is the next working day. If they delay then that's on them.

Really annoying, the worse one is companies who take a payment and also a "ghost" payment, Asda online shopping I'm looking at you.

The firm I work for takes card payments (both domestic and international cards) and they show up on our end-of-day transaction summary report every day. The total figure for that day is paid into our bank account two working days later.

We have no control over how long the individual transactions take to make their way out of the customer's bank account at all, which is presumably under the control of the card payments department of their own bank/credit card company.