A Monday Direct Debit begins on Thursday.
Thursday is input day. Bacs processes the accepted data on Friday and passes it to the receiving payment providers. Monday is entry day, when the customer is debited and the organisation is credited. If Monday is a bank holiday, a Tuesday entry still starts on Thursday: Friday is day two and Tuesday is day three.
The lag is deliberate, not dead time. Validation and routing happen before both accounts move together on entry day. The payment date feels like the start only because the first two working days are invisible to the payer.
Follow the three-day cycle →The banks settle Bacs once each business day.
The hardest part is not the sailing.
It is learning to steer, navigate, cook and clean with people you have only just met. Young crew members share the work that keeps an ocean-going yacht moving, then some return as volunteer Watch Leaders. More than half of the project’s skippers first stepped aboard as nervous trainees. On 28 August, Merrilyn will offer people living with metastatic breast cancer a day away from treatment routines, alongside others who understand them.
Support The Rona Trust →Your card says accepted before the banks pay.
Friday: why a card payment can be accepted before money moves between banks, how thousands of purchases become one net amount, and why Visa and Mastercard Europe settle in 24-hour cycles.