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Comment by sliverstorm | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, everything in the banking & money transfer world takes 2-3 days, and Paypal acts as a middleman, so an in => out would take 4-6 (business) days.

The only reason Bank of America's ATM gives you cash on the spot is it scans the check, "thinks" it is good, and BoA credits you cash. Paypal is not in the business of crediting anyone anything, not in the least because anybody can sign up for an account with almost no identification.

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The 2-3 day wait isn't the case in the UK anymore. UK banks - under pressure from the government via the Office of Fair Trading - now process money transfers in half a day.

The point is that the transfer never required that long to process, but if a Bank (or PayPal) can hold on to your money for a few extra days then it's a few more days of interest on the money for them.

http://www.ukpayments.org.uk/faster_payments_service/backgro...

In the US they also hold it that long so that if you overdraft they can retroactively reorder your transactions largest first so that you will get the maximum number of overdraft fees.

I get how that works, but how come when you write a check at the supermarket, they can verify whether or not it's good in a few seconds?

I have never seen them do that. Where do you live that such a thing is possible?

Anywhere in the US, it's possible, and most likely other countries too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_verification_service "Account current status verification"

None of those methods actually clear a check as valid. They check the past history of the account, or check whether the account is valid, but none actually check if the check will clear when cashed.

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