Time to accomplish bank transactions in Switzerland

Maybe I’m being a little snarky here, but how can it be that a simple transaction from one Swiss online bank to another Swiss online bank takes 24h to go through?

Do they load cash into a backpack and walk from bank A to bank B :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:?!

Seeing this, I really begin to understand the appeal of crypto.

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In my understanding, it is because transactions get bundled together once a day and sent out as a package.

I noticed that if I do a wire transfer before 12 am, it is quicker than when I do it in the afternoon.

Just an educated guess, could be something else.

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Maybe they’re manually reviewing your transactions for security or compliance reasons?

It usually doesn’t take as long for me, few hours tops.

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If it was for security or compliance reasons, I’d have no objections since I value both

It will get better: https://www.six-group.com/en/products-services/banking-services/billing-and-payments/instant-payments.html

By August 2024, the biggest of the Swiss banks will have to be capable of processing instant payments, with the remaining banks following in 2026.

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Excellent news! So Switzerland hasn’t been quite up-to-date technically :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

We have one of the best banking/payment systems in the world afaik.

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You work in the industry, so I’m sure you know more, but for me coming from Poland in 2011, it was a bit of a shock… Compared to online banking in Poland, Switzerland (and France where I was living at that time) was really way behind… I remember how surprised I was when I saw in Carrefour someone paying with cheque :joy:.

Recently I had to pay something quickly, not to block the delivery of goods and already before 2 PM I was not able to schedule the payment for the same day. Fortunately it was paid during the night, so all was good for the morning next day.

I guess the main reason for that is that in Poland after the transformation, a lot of stuff was built from scratch and here in Switzerland everyone is a bit afraid to touch the mainframes still running in DCs :grin: .

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Reminds me of my holidays in Estonia in the early 2000’s: I was blown off my feet by how far they were in terms of digitalization and electronic payment everywhere. I felt like being the guy visiting from a developing country.

No idea where they stand today in terms of digital progress compared to CH, but I believe I’ve read an article about some cantonal Regierungsdelegation recently travelling to Estonia to learn about digital processes.

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There is no incentive for banks to improve it in a hurry

In UK it was the same in the past but you can now transfer from one account to another in <2 hours

You can Twint of course

I would agree. My experience of US is that it seems to be in the stone age in comparison

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Interesting, why do you think that is? They should be interested in improving customer service, no? Or is this some kind of Swiss monopoly scheme?

In Poland, since quite some time, I guess most of the banks (if not all) have express payment option, which means immediate transfer 24/7. It just cost more, but at my banks the cost is about 1 CHF flat.

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From what I heard, Baltic States are far better than Poland in this regard.

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Improve customer service :rofl:

In a free market investing money to build such a system didn’t make sense because customers had no choice

Thank goodness for technical innovation and competition.Due to Paypal, Apple pay etc they have set up Twint to try to avoid losing business. Crypto is another a threat which should give them incentive to change

Case study of UK is interesting. It used to take 2 or 3 days for a payment to arrive: the money left your account and only arrived in the recipients account 2 or 3 days later. So the bank had a free cash float for these 2-3 days . They only set up “faster payments” following government intervention.

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Wow, interesting indeed :grin:

I wish they would focus more on developing innovative business models than innovative ways to screw customers…

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I issued a transfer from UBS at 11:00.
Funds arrived at IBKR by 13:30.

Seems to work faster internationally than locally. :sweat_smile:

I think it depends on the bank, every month I make a transfer in the morning from BCV (Vaud) bank to Revolut, ZAK and IBKR at the same time and it takes about 30 min to arrive.

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Just few years ago it was not possible to schedule a Swiss bank transfer for the same day immediately after the day had started at 0:00 (without an extra fee). Now if I send the same kind of transfer before noon, it arrives within 20-90 minutes. There is also level 2 network TWINT for instant transfers, and it is absolutely correct that it was introduced as a response on Google pay etc.

But yes, there are for example Instant SEPA transfers in Euro, although not all banks support them. Crypto transfers can be fast, but can also got stuck.

Exactly, it is often advantageous to skip technological generations if you are behind already :grin:

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I’ve read, unfortunately could not find the article I’ve read few years ago, that their entire (at least most of) government/public sector is digitalize in a blockchain and that their level of cybersecurity is really though thank to this technology.

So yeah, they are a step foward most of UE country in term of digitalization :slight_smile:

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You used a Swiss IBAN for IBKR. Anything before 12:00 wil arrive on the same day, sometimes even within a couple of minutes.

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