Useless traditional banks. šŸ˜’

Expecting a regular payment to hit Monzo today from NatWest. Apparently they don’t process payment at weekend, so I’ll have to wait until Tuesday, after the bank holiday.

Why the hell should that be? It’s done by computers, it’s not like a cashier gets a bundle of notes out of the safe and schleps over to Monzo HQ.

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Sorry you mean was it a cash transfer from a branch

If depends on the payment type. If it was a Bacs credit then it wouldn’t be cleared to your account by any bank until Tuesday as all Bacs members follow the Bacs processing calendar.

Natwest do process faster payments immediately even over weekends however.

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And why doesn’t Bacs work weekends? Which bit is not automated?

Hey, gotta give those computers a day off some time! On a more serious note, this is why modern fintech disrupting the banking space is a good thing. It’s stagnant

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BACS only runs Monday to Friday and not on bank holidays

2018 processing calendar: https://www.bacs.co.uk/documentlibrary/bacs_processing_calendar_2018.pdf

2019 processing calendar:

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Why though?

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BACS was structured around the working day principle, l think it’s more batch orientated than event (payment orientated) - happy to be corrected. Important to note that CHAPS is also linked to working days, so you may pay for expeidated clearance but it won’t happen if you miss working day guidelines. Although CHAPS is mainly used for high value transactions.

I’d be surprised if NatWest sent via BACS rather than Faster Payments which works 24/7 (system availability permitting). Although l did have an instance of being told that the Monzo sort code wasn’t eligible for Faster Payments a few weeks back so possibly may have happened for you…

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This is taken from GoCardless about Direct Debits, but it applies to BACs payments too. The ā€œDesigned in the 1970’sā€ is probably a great hint of why it takes 3 working days :joy: .

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https://gocardless.com/direct-debit/timings/

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I never thought l would use this word in this forum… Prehaps the best description is ā€˜rust’

@anon23935806

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Rust and maybe punched cards also. :wink:

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The reason BACS is 3 day and working day only is because vans with paper Instructions and Direct Debits would literally criss cross the country. It was the quickest way to do it back then :see_no_evil:

Many traditional banks don’t process Standing Orders (or SOPs) on non-working days because…well, it has always been done that way. NatWest will process a SIP 24/7 I believe.

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Look on the upside. If it ran 24/7 some of you wouldn’t be paid until Monday.

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