Banking after midnight

gingercordial

Not so much a question as an observation.

I have a few manual transfers I usually make on the first of the month, moving the interest earned on my Nationwide Flex Direct account to somewhere more useful plus some payments to regular savers. This weekend I was still up at gone midnight on Friday 30 June/Saturday 1 July, so decided that I would do them then. It was approximately 12.30am on 1 July - I am completely certain it was well after midnight.

There are some interesting discrepancies between whether various banks think the transaction was carried out on 30 June or 1 July.

1. Nationwide current account to Natwest current account

- Nationwide correctly shows this as outbound on 1 July (so is the internal transfer I also made to my Nationwide regular saver).
- Natwest online banking shows the inbound money as credited on 30 June! Note a subsequent transfer to this Natwest account at about 9am on 1 July does indeed show as 1 July, so it isn't because it was a Saturday.

2. Tesco current account to Virgin Money regular savers

- Here Tesco show the outbound payments as leaving on 30 June even though when I did them they definitely said "1 July 2017" on the last screen before hitting the final confirm button.
- Virgin shows them as crediting on 2 July ie Sunday. This had me a little worried on Saturday as with the outbound payments suddenly showing as 30 June, Natwest also doing that above and no sign of inbound payments I thought they might have been rejected as being "too early" for July's allowance.

So why do Natwest and Tesco believe in time travel? I understand some banks not booking over the weekend so I don't find late credits particularly unusual, but why did these two book them on the day before I made them?

And yet this has never happened when I would have preferred the money to go in the day before, like when a couple of months ago I forgot February was short and so made my monthly minimum funding transfers in a panic at 00.05 on 1 March... nobody credited those as 28 Feb, alas.

Any other experiences of this kind of thing? What time after midnight is "safely" the next day for all banks?

I'm not in any way annoyed, just curious...

agrinnall

Banks work in different ways, it's best to assume the worst case then you won't be disappointed and you may be pleasantly surprised. In the main it's a legacy from 50 years of computerised banking and several hundred years before that of ledgers.

datlex

I think it has to do with the time their systems update and the order they apply transactions. Banks don't update at midnight. Some update later than others. In theory, you could actually take advantage of this when it comes to funding accounts without losing interest.

Geoff1963

I sometimes find : money which I'm due to get on a Monday, is in my account on a Saturday ; while payments which I make on a Saturday, are received immediately, but aren't processed from my account until the Monday.
Some banks will honour a Direct Debit if they get the money by 3pm that day, others need it before the end of the previous day.
I pre-ordered a CD 2 weeks ahead, but could only complete the order by making sure my account had enough money at the time ; then I took it out for a fortnight.

The most risky was booking into a hotel overnight with no money, but a salary which was due into my account the next morning. Fortunately, they knew me ; and very fortunately, I got paid.

"Faster banking" seems to have got faster over the last few years ; they used to vaguely suggest "within 2 hours", but minutes have shrunk to seconds.