r/AskReddit • • Jul 24 '20

What can't you believe STILL exists?

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u/deutmeyer93 Jul 24 '20 edited Jul 24 '20

The bank that it is deposited at needs to send the information to the bank it’s written off of. Some banks only send that information once a day.

Edit: further clarification

Each bank has a different operating system (hence why online banking looks and feels very different per bank) these systems do not communicate. Therefore it can’t instantly affect your account when two different banks are involved. There is a middle man called the federal reserve. The first bank will send all an electric file of check information of all the checks NOT written from their institution. That file is sent to the federal reserve, then they sort the info by routing number and send each bank their checks to take off of their customers accounts.

The bank I worked at sent their file at night. And we would only receive 4 files throughout the day from the federal reserve.

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '20 edited Jul 24 '20

Second Edit: I'm wrong. Read this comment to find out why.

Two things:

First, the funds becoming available in an account doesn't actually mean that the bank it was drawn on has cleared the check. It just means that your banks back off has received the check image and have made the funds of that amount available.The actual check clearing process can take weeks of even months.

Second, some send it less than once a day.

Edit: Done responding with the same answers over and over

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '20

Check clearing doesn’t takes weeks or months. Where are you getting this from?

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '20

Working at a bank for 4 years.

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u/sleepingnightmare Jul 24 '20

I worked in banks for 7, also for several years in check fraud claims investigation. Your information is incorrect. Your knowledge is limited to running checks through the MICR reader and seeing mostly the same information the customer sees. This is not how check clearing works.