As others have indicated, your bank may well simply be printing and mailing a check. A customer of mine banks at the same branch of the same bank as I do. They pay me “online”. The bank prints a check and mails it to me. They debit my customer the day the check is cut, but of course they do not credit me until I pay the check in.
As others have said, it’s all batch jobs (usually). Most often the transactions are database driven, and databases don’t do updates-on-the-fly so well. There’s a reconciliation point where transactions get processed. It’s not ideal but, in the given case of BofA or similar, it’s the most efficient.
All mine are instantaneous. However, I do all my bill paying backwards: I log into my creditor’s website, and make the request to pull funds from my bank. My bank then makes the transfer on the same day.
The only exception is Citi, which posts all payments by 6pm EST. Any payments received after that time will post the next day.
Two possibilities:
[ol]
[li]Yes, the bank can pay immediately, but they’d like to be able to use your money without paying you for it. The bank will withdraw the amount in your account immediately, but then take its merry time to pay the receiver. In that time, they get to use your money. [/li]There are now laws regulating this, and the bank might simply be hewing to the rules as closely as it can in order to play with your money for as long as possible.
[li]It is also possible that the company retrieving the money doesn’t have the ability to take electronic transfers. This means the bank has to produce a paper check and then mail it out. That can take a couple of days.[/li]
In Quicken, if you want to pay a bill on the 23rd of the month, Quicken will actually do the transaction on the 20th of the month. However, most of the time, I’ve noticed the money is credited to my account by the 21st or 22nd anyway.
[/ol]
wouldn’t it be easier just to log into your bank and do them all at the same time?
We do both and my way seems faster.