Zelle has different hurdles. I recently tried to pay someone and the maximum daily transaction with a single person was set at $500 with my bank unless there was some sort of "history". It took me 5 separate days of payment to accomplish what a single check could do. The identity and confirmation dialogues were exceptionally clear that the bank had no liability so I have no clue what their issue is considering what inflation is doing to the dollar.
> Zelle has different hurdles. I recently tried to pay someone and the maximum daily transaction with a single person was set at $500 with my bank unless there was some sort of "history".
And that's varying by bank too. I can only send $1000 per day total by Zelle (except a "day" is much longer than 24 hours usually) and some accounts are silently rejected as recipients. My girlfriend has to pay the rent (I pay my share to her over multiple days) because I can't send to my landlord at all and even if I could, the amount would be wrong. She has neither limit.
For person to person (not person to business), electronically, no, not really. ACH takes weeks too (yes I know your bank will credit you in advance temporarily)
There's a nonzero chance you will hit some kind of risk/fraud system based on amount too.
Wire is much better but frequently $50-100 per transaction as a fee.
Wow, that’s crazy. I knew your system had some issues, but I didn’t know it was this bad.
Just for comparison, in Germany, bank transfers are free and take 1-2 days, for a fee or free (depending on the bank) you can do instant transfers taking seconds.
They also like to re-order your pending transactions within a certain time windows to maximize bounce fees.
(If you don't explicitly have overdrafting off, so that it would just fail your transaction instead of letting it go through. The default setting may have changed in the last decade due to law but I remember these scenarios vividly)
$0 balance
+$20
-$1
-$1
-$1
Within a day or two of each other won't necessarily be positive $17 balance.
It could easily become:
$0 balance
-$1 (overdraft fee $40)
-$1 (overdraft fee $40)
-$1 (overdraft fee $40)
+$20
= negative $103 balance
Banks make a lot of money doing this to poor people.
The financial class is full of super-predatory behavior.
Can confirm. Had exactly this happen to me years ago when I was a younger man with a much lower income and a much tighter budget. I call it my "how [the bank] stole Christmas" story.
Gaining access to a credit union was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
Yes, but they take 1-3 days in my experience. I'm not sure why the parent wouldn't have used them in this case except that they also require sharing of very sensitive information, which doesn't work too well unless transferring within family/close network.
