Ditto. It's what I always did in the UK and in the US I've attempted to do the same. Two out of three of my card providers (HSBC and Chase aka United Airlines) do offer the service - ie pay the bill in full at the latest date possible without penalty, but CapitalOne don't. Hence, I no longer use their card - only got it because they actually offered me a card just after I arrived...

Hugo

I've been impressed by the new Faster Payments service in the UK. It's always been possible to send money to other accounts at any bank just by entering the name, account, sort code and amount on the online account service, but it's taken 3-4 days. I've recently been sent a few payments and they have arrived in the time it's taken me to login to my account to check if it has arrived. Apparently the banks were considering charging for the "service", but I haven't heard about any actually doing this.

I read over the FAQ on Check 21, and it doesn't say anything about this practice. The goal of Check 21, as I understand it, was to make things more efficient by allowing banks to scan paper checks and then pass the scans around electronically, thus accelerating the process and cutting the costs of check handling. There's no reason why a bank has to take the money out of your account when you write the check. The money should stay there until the other side claims it and then it's transferred.

With electronic payees (as for all my major utility bills and such), there's very little latency for this, so it doesn't matter. For checks that are printed and stuffed into envelopes, that latency is a much bigger deal.

Like I said, I couldn't find any current reference to it. But I distinctly remember that change happening at the same time. Maybe it was just a coverup. In all honesty, unless you have an interest-bearing checking account, it doesn't really make any difference. The bank is making money on your money regardless of whether it's in your account or not. And I'm not aware of any checking account that gives any significant interest. I know mine basically just covers my monthly fee.

Hey, how dare you criticize the interest practices of my bank. Why, they're giving me a whole one third of one percent annual interest on my checking account. Over the course of a year, that'll give me enough money to go on vacation -- provided my vacation is no further away than I can drive on 8/10 of a gallon of gasoline, that is...

tanstaafl.

I'm getting three-quarters of a percent! I win!!

It's not so much the low interest that honks me off, it's the money-in-limbo that gets me annoyed. I have a money market account that gets better rates than my checking account. I used to transfer money from the money market to the checking account then pay my bills from that. The way Chase rigged it, I had to move the money in sooner, since they insisted on taking the money out three days prior to a scheduled payment. To add insult to injury, if I made a large deposit, they would randomly decide to place a hold on the money without indicating this in any way that I could deduce, causing a transfer in the other way, at one point, to mysteriously fail.

What's crazy is that, with the modern "paperless" check clearing infrastructure, none of this is necessary. Money moves instantly, so why have holds and delays and all of that? The only reason I can imagine is that Chase is trying to increase their "float" on your money.

Wells Fargo does the hold on large deposits also. I don't remember the amount that is the limit, but they deposit 50% and then wait like four or five (working) days to deposit the rest. It is really annoying.

Does anybody still use credit unions? From the intest rates I've seen quoted here, my credit union has a lot higher rate.

My bank is a credit union. On their standard savings account, the interest is currently 1.75%, and the money market is 3.25%. It's just the checking account that's only 0.75%