Online statements - a vent

koloko

deleted deleted deleted

p00hsticks

koloko wrote: »

What on earth is slowing down the technology so much that means I cannot see items I have purchased four days after buying them? They must have the ability to show this seconds afterwards!

It's been about six-seven years since I worked in credit/debit card processing, but when I was around the process (apart from the authorisation stage) was an overnight batch driven process, still following the same basic form as when data was physically passed on tapes or disks rather than being transmitted electrically.

The route the transaction used to follow was;

1. the retailer sends details of the transaction to their 'merchant acquirer' - this is usually done in a batch overnight, but there's no obligation on the merchant to do it every night, some smaller retailers might only do it once a week, and there's always a chance the transmission will fail.

2. The merchant acquirer then consolidates all recieved transactions into the relevant card companies (Visa, Mastercard, Amex etc) and transmits them to the card company. The card companies have strict cut offs for receipt of these files - if you miss the deadline then the file doesn't get processed until at least 24 hours later (I don't think they process at weekends)

3. The card company then sorts the transactions by issuing bank and sends files to each bank.

4. the bank then processes the file to update individual's statements

Many banks will reduce the 'available balance' on an account as soon as they become aware of a potential transaction via the authorisation process, which happens as part of the transaction itself, but it's not until the full transaction details become available via the route I've descibed above that your statement will be updated.

(Note - as I said it's been a few years since I was involved with this so it's possible that the process may have changed since then, but I doubt it - this is a global process and it would be a really major undertaking to alter, and cost all parties involved vast sums of money)

koloko

deleted deleted deleted

Esoog

Methinks you may be right

Hax

FWIW: CapitalOne have a "pending transaction" section as part of their online service. If you have a look at the transactions, they normally (maybe even always?) show the merchant and the date/time of the transaction. This is normally updated pretty soon after the transaction - maybe not instant - but a lot quicker than when the main account transactions page is updated.

p00hsticks

koloko wrote: »

That's possibly the most complete answer to any question asked on this forum

Thank you.

Actually I've realised that there's the possibility of yet a further initial stage which could delay things even further - namely that large retailers (such as Tesco, M & S) are probably going to collect up the individual transactions from the tills at every branch and consolidate them into a single file before they even send it to their merchant acquirer.

I think that probably the quickest you could get through this entire process is around 24-48 hours - so if you go out for a meal in a restaurant, when the restaurant closes at night it will send the days transactions to the merchant acquirer, who passes it on to Visa by 7am, and they'll then send it to your bank during the following day to apply the update to your credit card statement overnight the following night.

In this era of electronic communication it sounds cumbersome, but it's an extremely complicated standard that had developed over many years. Obviously any changes in such sensitive and widely used financial systems have to be agreed by many parties and thoroughly tested, so as I said before I can't see any major change being made unless there is a major advantage to be had.

jonesMUFCforever

Why not set up a direct debit to pay off the full amount each month - job done!