Yep I'm confused when reading about it and I studied economics and accounting!
When I make a payment from HSBC to someone elses account it usually appears in about 2 hours or less which is great. I think there has to be a good economics argument for the benefits of having prompter payments.
I was also thinking that even if the funds aren't in the 2 days no man's land, but they are in your account, banks are still using this money for loans and other business activity.
So they still have access to do stuff with that money, that's why I was thinkingthat even if money leaves them quicker it'll arrive quicker too.
That's why if there's a run on the bank and people try and withdraw everything the bank's more likely to go under, because a the banks are using some of this money.
I bet the economic meltdown is due to banks getting rid of the £1.50+ ATM service fee to use another bank's ATM
