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Comment by fcbrooklyn | Hacker News Reader

Once upon a time, a friend of mine needed to repay me for a loan of about $1000. Since we both banked at HSBC, we figured walking into the bank together might be a simple way to do that. Nope. I had opened my hsbc account online, he had opened his account in person. Therefore we may as well have been two separate banks, apparently. After debating the sanity of this system with a bank manager (whose fault it clearly was not), I noticed a big sign on their ATM. It said "Now accepting cash deposits!". I asked the guy if there was a limit on the size of those deposits. There was. I can't remember how much, but it was in the neighborhood of five grand I think.

My friend took a withdrawal in cash. He handed me the money. I walked over to the machine and deposited it.

Makes sense if you look at it sideways.

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About ten years ago I moved from New York State to Washington State. I wanted a bank account that would follow me and Chase had not yet bought WaMu so I went to BoA in NY, opened an account, moved my money into it.

I arrived in Seattle and at the BoA branch there they said they didn't recognize BoA of New York. I couldn't deposit into the WA branch. I could write myself a check and it would be processed with the reduced speed of a check from an out of state bank.

There are also checks for that kind of thing.

Cheques don't typically clear immediately (to crudely attempt to prevent overdraft/double spending attempts) and can have a cost associated with their purchase.

Cheques are uncommon in Europe now-a-days.

They take five days to clear, however.

Eh? How long ago was this? He couldn't write a cheque? He couldn't do a simple BACS/CHAPS/FPS transfer?

I'd have thought it simple without even walking into the bank...

It's not that long ago that doing a transfer even between different subsidiaries of the same UK bank still took 3 days.

Usually it'd be faster if it was within the same bank, but even then there was often no guarantee it'd be same day.

If you wanted a fast transfer, withdrawing and depositing the cash again was the fastest option for many combinations of accounts until just a few years ago.

Long ago? TODAY i can't pay my credit card balance, which is simply another account in my own bank, in less than 2 business days!

I log on their site, i see both accounts under my login, i just transfer money from one to another. Two. Business. Days.

It is probably the maximum amount of time they can get away with. Because there is an obvious benefit for the bank to delay. They can use your money as their security longer. They can charge you late fees. etc.

Well I didn't realise we were talking about speed, OP spoke of ease.

Cheques are not common in Europe now-a-days.

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