Time taken to clear a cheque

Rip_ToffBrits

Is it me or are the banks on the fiddle yet again?

I'm 61 years old and when I first opened a bank account (in the days before technology) I could pay in a cheque and it would clear manually in 3 working days.

Over the past weeks I've been helping my daughter and her partner sort out their financial problems, and it has meant drawing a number of cheques to pay off credit cards/personal loans/finance agreements as well as working capital into his small business.

I have been absolutely shocked at how difficult banks make it to settle these debts. The worst has been the time it now takes to clear a cheque. I had no idea that banks are now taking upto 7 working days to clear cheques. How can this be? How on earth can this be justified when they now have modern technology for money transfer? I paid a Britannia Building Society cheque into an Abbey current account on Thursday 11th Nov and it will not have cleared until Friday the 20th Nov. Scandalous, absolutely scandalous

crispy_chris

They do have modern technology for money transfers, however cheques are a bit of an antiquated system which is being phased out anyway.

You could have transferred the money electronically and it would have been cleared into their account either on the day via Faster Payments or CHAPS, or in 3 days via BACS.

Your example does seem like a long time to clear a cheque but it varies depending on your account type.

gt94sss2

Rip_ToffBrits wrote: »

I have been absolutely shocked at how difficult banks make it to settle these debts. The worst has been the time it now takes to clear a cheque. I had no idea that banks are now taking upto 7 working days to clear cheques. How can this be? How on earth can this be justified when they now have modern technology for money transfer? I paid a Britannia Building Society cheque into an Abbey current account on Thursday 11th Nov and it will not have cleared until Friday the 20th Nov.

Since November 2007, banks now use the 2-4-6 process to clear cheques paid into a current account - they can exceed these time scales if they wish but this process covers the maximum amount of time they can take.

This page shows how the process should work.

These days, cheques are considered antiquated and their use is falling rapidly - with consumers changing to electronic payments, like the new Faster Payments system - its not worth anyone's time/money to invest in a new faster system to clear cheques..

Regards
Sunil

Extant

Abbey is a rare exception as to how they handle cheques, in comparison to the other high street banks. The majority of the banks will operate within the 2-4-6 timescale, as linked above, and a cheque paid in on Monday will be available to withdraw within that week.

This is a formalized timescale for the banks to adhere to. In the past, yes, different time tables were used - but they varied from bank to bank, were often secretive, etc.

To query this system on the grounds that "modern technology" should make it faster is fruitless - cheques are a fundamentally un-modern technology that relies of manually shifting pieces of paper from A to B. They are in a managed decline, with usage falling year by year. Cheques are not going to get faster because it's not worth making them faster.

If you need to move money quickly, even BACS is faster (three days) with most banks now accepting and sending Faster Payments (maximum of four hours, but instantaneous in most cases).

vet8

Rip_ToffBrits wrote: »

Is it me or are the banks on the fiddle yet again?

I'm 61 years old and when I first opened a bank account (in the days before technology) I could pay in a cheque and it would clear manually in 3 working days.

Over the past weeks I've been helping my daughter and her partner sort out their financial problems, and it has meant drawing a number of cheques to pay off credit cards/personal loans/finance agreements as well as working capital into his small business.

I have been absolutely shocked at how difficult banks make it to settle these debts. The worst has been the time it now takes to clear a cheque. I had no idea that banks are now taking upto 7 working days to clear cheques. How can this be? How on earth can this be justified when they now have modern technology for money transfer? I paid a Britannia Building Society cheque into an Abbey current account on Thursday 11th Nov and it will not have cleared until Friday the 20th Nov. Scandalous, absolutely scandalous

I could not agree more.

I know that cheques are old fashioned, but a lot of people still use them and a lot of businesses rely on them. One of the firms I work for gets paid in cheques all the time as they deal with private individuals. It makes me angry when posters on here say, "Oh don't use cheques, they are old hat". Banks still offer cheques and they should offer a good service, not the CR&P service they do.

It shocks me that it takes longer to clear a cheque now than it used to 40 years ago. Some modern advancement.