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For fairness one must say that our free run-of-the-mill wire transfers being instant is a relatively recent development. They used to take multiple days in pre-
by Slartie 6y ago
For fairness one must say that our free run-of-the-mill wire transfers being instant is a relatively recent development. They used to take multiple days in pre-SEPA-days, and international payments were a hassle (and also usually not free). And even today not all transfers are instant, as both banks must support this feature. But the processing time for the non-instant ones is down to one day across the board at least, so that improved.
- mschuster91 6y agoIt was never a technical reason to begin with that transfers took so long (i.e. multiple days), rather that banks made some side money by treating the transferred money as free loan. Similar to stuff like the common free international roaming, SEPA is something that the EU massively fought for the consumers against the entrenched players.
- rimliu 6y agoNot sure where they took multiple days. Same bank: couple of minutes. Different bank: depends of the time of the day. If you missed the last clearing, the transfer will happen next day. Otherwise clearing was done 3-4 times per day. So the only way for the payment to be delayed for days would be making on Firday evening. Country-specific thing, most likely.
- ajuc 6y agoDepends on the country. Poland had intra-day free interbank transfer system called Elixir since 1994. Basically it pays to be backward with these things - you skip many bad solutions and can learn from others. Our bank system was reconstructed almost from scratch in early 90s so it's quite modern now.
- corford 6y agoSEPA really is great. Would be awesome if more of the world (including the US) adopted IBAN - maybe it would lead to a similarly cheap and fast global payment area.