John Anderton wrote:
This of course is a total rip off. The money disappears from your
account immediately but does not appear on the recipient's account
until the three days are up. In the meantime, the bank makes margin
on it.

There are sound reasons for the money disappearing from your account
immediately and not appearing (well at least for a day or two) in the
recipient's account. It's to do with the risk of a fraudster writing
multiple cheques when they've only got enough funds to cover one and
the time it takes to get the physical cheque from the recipient's
branch to your branch.

The fact that it makes a bit of money for the bank is nice for them but
doesn't cover the cost of processing the cheque.

Those *were* sound reasons... but now the banks are reserving the right
to repudiate a cheque at any later time, even after it has been
"cleared".

That means the banks still get the interest, but now they bear none of
the risk either; while the customer suffers the delay in cash-flow and
now bears all of the risk. The banks shouldn't be allowed to have it
both ways.


--
Ian White