

Faster Transfers Beta (US only) - jhoon
https://support.stripe.com/questions/how-can-i-get-my-funds-transferred-faster-than-seven-days

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ulfw
I just don't get why banking in the US is still so far behind. I recently did
a wire transfer from Turkey to Germany between two people's accounts at two
different banks. It settled in a mere morning. Same day.

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seanmccann
Wire transfers in the United States are immediate as well. This has nothing to
do with wire transfers.

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ajtaylor
The last time I did a wire transfer in the US (admittedly a couple years ago
now) it was anything but instant. IIRC there was a lot of manual work that had
to be done behind the scenes to complete the transaction. And you have to do
into a branch to do it as well - no internet banking!

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sim0n
I've sent many wires online before in the US. They were definitely not instant
and took up to a few days to clear but could be sent online.

~~~
ulfw
Exactly what I meant. I have done many transfers in the US as well. I think
the fastest was three days for me. The average more like 4-5 biz days (which
ended up being a whole week as the weekend was in between).

~~~
rhc2104
ulfw,

I believe you did an ACH transfer instead of an American wire transfer. Wire
transfers do not take multiple days in America, but they cost a lot of money
($10-30).

So there are ACH transfers, which are much slower, and there are wire
transfers, which are somewhat slower and expensive.

~~~
ulfw
You are very right about that. They were ACH transfers.

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tibbon
This is awesome, and I'm glad to see them innovating around it. I've scratched
my head for years now around clearing time of payments and digital payment
systems. It isn't like you have to load gold coins on a ship, or manually have
people verifying checks these days. There's realistically little reason for
the entire system to be so slow- except for the fact that it is.

For years payment processors have been more than happy to just be fine with
things being slow. Paypal has been around how long, and they don't seem to be
pushing for it to go faster. This doesn't seem to be a problem bound to
Moore's Law or the speed of the internet, just something that needs to be
taken care of.

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spellboots
Not sure how PayPal could be faster - money is transferred instantly to my
bank account after receiving it through PayPal. Is that a UK only thing?

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tibbon
Yea, in the US its a vague 3-5 days.

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TomGullen
I don't understand why it has to be anything longer than 5 seconds, is there
any reasonable explanation for this?

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sentenza
It might not be reasonable, but there is an explanation. It's been a while
since I heared the podcast but Planet Money explained something along the
lines that all the American banks are invested in an old, inefficient system
of processing these transfers and there is no incentive to change. Here's the
episode:
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/10/04/229224964/episode-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/10/04/229224964/episode-489-the-
invisible-plumbing-of-our-economy)

In Europe, the EU recently established the rule that all money transfers
within the entire EU must be concluded within one business day. Thus most
Europeans are surprised when they hear that it takes so much longer in the US.

EDIT: Another commenter pointed out that the EU directive is actually still
somewhere within the legislative process. My misconception arose from the fact
that I can't remember the last bank transfer that took longer than one
business day.

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zabaki
Actually just read a few talks by danes in the financial council in Denmark.
They are currently reconstructing the entire payment infrastructure to allows
realtime transfers of payments. For payments under $100.000, transfers are
done three times a day, as is seen with services such as MobilePay (Venmo
wannabe) that i believe are considered a e-money institution. If anyone is
interested then i can provide the links to the slides. They are, however, in
danish.

~~~
unfunco
Not to sound pedantic, but three times a day is not realtime. In the United
Kingdom at least, transferring money from one bank account to another at the
same bank is instant (pretty much sub-second) transaction and from one bank
account to another at a different bank is generally processed within fifteen
minutes, nearly all UK banks support Faster Payments[0].

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service)

~~~
zabaki
Youre right. Real time tranaction is simply what The bankers here in denmark
called it. Shows the level of mis-mash between expectations from consumers and
the financial sector (in my country at least)

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zabaki
EU is currently working on changing that, inside eu at least.

Their proposal can be read here:
[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2013/0264\(COD\)&l=en)

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akanet
I just signed up for the beta and was approved in about ~15m. It's not
material to my business but still cool to see Stripe improving the experience
across the board.

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pbiggar
Got an email from Stripe about this this morning. Our accountant was ecstatic!

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ceejayoz
As a non-accountant, why? Doesn't this mean a single infusion of five days
worth of transfers and then back to a transfer-a-day coming into the account?

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zx2c4
How does this work?

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jhoon
Stripe is trialling faster transfer schedules for US-based users, meaning
you'll get your money in two business days instead of waiting one week.

If you'd like to be part of the beta, you can visit
[https://manage.stripe.com/faster-us-
transfers](https://manage.stripe.com/faster-us-transfers) and if you're US-
based, you'll automatically be registered to participate in the beta. We're
incrementally adding users to the beta, so we'll let you know as soon as
you've been added.

(I work at Stripe.)

~~~
zx2c4
I should have written a more clear question. I read the page, and I understand
that now you're doing two-day instead of seven-day transfers.

What I'm wondering is, "how is this possible?" How is Stripe now moving the
money faster than before? What change made this possible? Did the stewards of
the ACH system make a change that allows this? Is Stripe advancing funds ahead
of time based on some kind of credit? Was the seven-day policy basically
arbitrary before, and so changing it to two-day basically involves changing an
integer somewhere in the codebase and updating documentation? Or is it
something else happening at a different layer? More generally, what are the
pieces at play in transferring money that influence transfer time? And which
of these pieces has Stripe interacted with in order to transfer funds faster?

~~~
dangrossman
This is how most businesses have been funded for the past 30+ years AFAIK.
Merchant account transactions are batched and settled nightly, then ACH'd to
the merchant the next day. You get the money 1-3 banking days after charging
someone. Stripe was the exception to the norm, and now they're doing what
everyone else does. Holding onto your money before transferring it to you is
something other merchant account providers only do on a case-by-case basis for
accounts they consider at high risk for fraud.

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notastartup
What about Canada? Seems like we live on the same region yet we are always
left out.

