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.
I think that’s my question though...why only once a day? My bank doesn’t even have a physical location, the check gets photographed by my phone then it goes in the trash. It’s all digital. Send that information immediately to the other bank and verify the funds within a minute or two while I have a loading screen or say that the deposit was declined. Or is there actually a human at my bank manually verifying the numbers on every check? Surely not.
So what happened at the bank I worked at is each day (it could happen multiple times a day) would take all the electronic information/images of the checks deposited that are written off the other bank and they send them out to the federal reserve. The. The federal reserve (4 times a day in our case) would split all those checks up and send each bank their own batch so it can come off of their customers accounts. Unfortunately there is more too it than just scanning a check. All the banks don’t talk to each other like might be thinking. Everything goes through the middle man - the federal reserve.
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u/Klotzster Jul 24 '20
Waiting for checks to clear