Speed of Balance Transfers

myhandle

I've done many credit card balance transfers in my time - most card providers will quote how long it takes.

Who are the fastest and slowest ?

Fastest for me are Capital One and CSMA - come through in 3 days.

Slowest is Halifax - they tell you it takes 10 working days and indeed it does.

Are they spotting stoozers and slowing them down a bit ?

Milarky

Agree with Halifax being the slowest - as they now actually make balance transfers take longer for 'money laundering' reasons [scoff!]

Actually most BTs should take 2 days 'plus' - the two days being the difference between the payment appearing on the sender's account and the receiver's as this goes via BACS mostly. The 'plus' part is the time in addition that the sender takes to process your request.

Most recent BT was from Scottish Widows [Lloyds TSB] to Virgin [MBNA - whose bank a/c is with the 'Co-op' actually!] which took 2 days to action and two more days to arrive. So 4 days in that case - fairly typical

The quickest BT took only 1 day! [technically impossible so I'd like to know how this was done!] from Nationwide Credit Services to Egg - now that's quick!

EDIT: And just to add that a friend of mine did a BT NW to Egg and their's took one day too [Theory: could they be using the 'VISA' settlements system in place of BACS to do balance transfers? Charges to - and therefore refunds to - credit cards normally take one day to appear as transactions. Any 'insider' insights?]

bridiej

they always tell me 10 days, but usually takes 2 days for Egg and up to 4 days if a new card and can only BT via post...

Robert_Sterling_3

Slowest is Halifax - they tell you it takes 10 working days and indeed it does.

I was suprised how long it took The Halifax One.

deemy2004

I've done many credit card balance transfers in my time - most card providers will quote how long it takes.
Slowest is Halifax - they tell you it takes 10 working days and indeed it does.

Are they spotting stoozers and slowing them down a bit ?

MY last bal transfer from halifax took 9 working days

I would not put it down to slow down because of stoozing, but rather halifax is slowing down generally !

Still waiting for fixed rate paperwork for an ISA transfered to them in Oct 04 ! Despite numerous calls.

gsnooks

Halifax took 10 working days

From 1st Nov - 15th Nov

Had to phone up to make sure they were putting the money in my account, and not paying someone elses balance because it took so long!! :-/

bethyblue612

thought I'd resurrect an old thread instead of starting a new one!

been a bit busy lately (running the marathon!), so completely forgot that my Morgan Stanley interest-free period runs out tomorrrow.

got turned down for a new card, so had to do some shuffling and ended up having to do 3 bt's, from First Direct, Nationwide and Capital One - did them all on Monday afternoon, just checked and they've arrived already. TWO working days - amazing! Can't even make a bank payment that quickly.

realaledrinker

In bank-speak, that's three working days - Mon, Tue, Weds!