The bank change that will improve your life
It can be a bit of dilemma patiently waiting for a friend or family member's fund transfer to arrive in your bank account.
Sometimes it can even take a few days for someone’s transfer to pop up in your “account balance”.
However, bank transfers will soon be changing thanks to a billion-dollar technology upgrade.
From January next year, customers of Australia’s four big banks, as well as 50 smaller institutions, will be able to instantly transfer money.
The upgrade follows a review of Australia’s payment systems in 2012, reported the ABC.
Adrian Lovney, chief executive of New Payments Platform – the company building the technology – said the new transfers will be good for businesses.
“Through the weekend, public holidays, at 3 o’clock in the morning — funds will arrive in the recipient’s bank account in about 30 to 45 seconds,” he said.
“The core benefit at launch is the faster receipt of money in real time, and that will happen 24/7, 365 days a year.”
“(Customers expect things to happen instantly, with a mobile phone, in a 24/7 digital economy — they expect if I’m going to send you money that you’ll receive it today and not next week.”
The company’s website reveals that the technology will also allow payments to be made using identifiers such as phone numbers, email addresses or ABNs, instead of solely using account numbers and BSBs.
One concern with this new technology is ensuring that fraud mechanisms are up to par.
The current delay in transferring money allows banks to use the time to scan transactions for fraud and for banks to stop it before it becomes an issue.
“What we might see is people using the speed of the system to rip people off or to con people or to trick people in ways that they do today, but faster,” Mr Lovney said.
“We’ve been hearing a lot recently about the ATO scams — people ringing up pretending to be from the Tax Office — or we also see lots of activity around romance scams.”
Are you excited for this new way to transfer money? Let us know in the comments below.