Strategies to guarantee arrival time for transfers between banks
Transfers are defined to arrive on a specific number of business days, nearly always one business day (if you submit it before the cutoff time). The exact number of days depends on the receiver bank, but when you try to create a transfer, it will tell you when it will arrive, before you send it out.
Wire transfers normally run through either the Fedwire system or the Clearing House Interbank Payments System (CHIPS). The process generally works like this: You approach a bank or other financial institution and ask to transfer money. You give the bank a certain code, either an international bank account number or one of several other standards, which informs the bank where to send the money.  The bank sends a message through a system like Fedwire to the receiving bank, along with settlement instructions.  This is where the process can get a bit tricky. For the wire transfer to work, the banks must have reciprocal accounts with each other, or the sending bank must send the money to a bank that does have such an account with the receiver. If the sending bank sends the money to a third-party bank, the transaction is settled between them, and the money is then sent to the receiving bank from the third-party bank. This last transaction may be a wire transfer, ACH transfer, etc.  The Federal Reserve fits into this because many banks hold accounts for this purpose with the Federal Reserve. This allows them to use the Fed as the third-party bank referred to above. Interestingly enough, this is one of the significant ways in which the Fed makes a profit, because it, along with every other bank and routing agent in the process, collects a miniscule fee on this process.  You'll often find sources that state that Fedwire is only for transferring large transactions; while this is technically correct, it's important to understand that financial institutions don't settle every wire transfer or payment immediately. Although the orders are put in immediately, the financial institutions settle their transactions in bulk at the end of the business day, and even then they normally only settle the difference. So, if Chase owes Bank of America $1M, and Bank of America owes Chase $750K, they don't send these as two transactions; Chase simply credits BAC $250K.  You didn't specifically ask about ACH transfers, which as littleadv pointed out, are different from wire transfers, but since ACH transfers can often form a part of the whole process, I'll explain that process too. ACH is a payment processing system that works through the Federal Reserve system, among others. The Federal Reserve (through the Fedline and FedACH systems) is by far the largest payment processor.  The physical cash itself isn't transferred; in simple terms, the money is transferred through the ACH system between the accounts each bank maintains at the Federal Reserve.  Here is a simple example of how the process works (I'm summarizing the example from Wikipedia). Let's say that Bob has an account with Chase and wants to get his paycheck from his employer, Stack Exchange, directly deposited into this account. Assume that Stack Exchange uses Bank of America as their bank.  Bob, the receiver, fills out a direct deposit authorization form and gives it to his employer, called the originator. Once the originator has the authorization, they create an entry with an Originating Depository Financial Institution, which acts as a middleman between a payment processor (like the Federal Reserve) and the originator. The ODFI ensures that the transaction complies with the relevant regulations. In this example, Bank of America is the ODFI.  Bank of America (the ODFI) converts the transaction request into an ACH entry and submits it, through an ACH operator, to the Receiving Depository Financial Institution (RDFI), which in this case is Chase bank. Chase credits (deposits) the paycheck in Bob's account.  The Federal Reserve fits into all of this in several ways. Through systems like Fedline and FedACH, the Fed acts as an ACH operator, and the banks themselves also maintain accounts at the Federal Reserve, so it's the institution that actually performs the settling of accounts between banks. As per the SIPC website: Most customers can expect to receive their property in one to three   months. When the records of the brokerage firm are accurate,   deliveries of some securities and cash to customers may begin shortly   after the trustee receives the completed claim forms from customers,   or even earlier if the trustee can transfer customer accounts to   another broker-dealer. Delays of several months usually arise when the   failed brokerage firm’s records are not accurate. It also is not   uncommon for delays to take place when the troubled brokerage firm or   its principals were involved in fraud. Source link: http://www.sipc.org/Who/SIPCQuestions/SIPCQuestion3.aspx "As mentioned in other answers, you find out by reading the Rulebook for that commodity and exchange.  I'll quote a couple of random passages to show how they vary: For CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) Random Length Lumber Futures, the delivery is ornate: Seller shall give his Notice of Intent to Deliver to the Clearing   House prior to 12:00 noon (on any Business Day after termination of   trading in the contract month. 20103.D. Seller's Duties If the buyer's designated destination is east of the western boundaries of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska,   Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma, and the western boundary of Manitoba,   Canada, the seller shall follow the buyer's shipping instructions   within seven (7) Business Days after receipt of such instructions. In   addition, the seller shall prepay the actual freight charges and bill   the buyer, through the Clearing House, the lowest published freight   rate for 73-foot railcars from Prince George, British Columbia to the   buyer's destination. If the lowest published freight rate from Prince   George, British Columbia to buyer's destination is a rate per one   hundred pounds, the seller shall bill the buyer on the weight basis of   1,650 pounds per thousand board feet. The term ""lowest published   freight rate"" refers only to the lowest published ""general through   rate"" and not to rates published in any other rate class. If, however, the buyer’s destination is outside of the aforementioned   area, the seller shall follow the same procedures except that the   seller shall have the right to change the point of origin and/or   originating carrier within 2 Business Days after receipt of buyer’s   original shipping instructions. If a change of origin and/or   originating carrier is made, the seller shall then follow the buyer's   revised instructions within seven (7) Business Days after receipt of   such instructions. If the freight rate to the buyer's destination is not published, the   freight charge shall be negotiated between the buyer and seller in   accordance with industry practice. Any additional freight charges resulting from diversion by the buyer   in excess of the actual charges for shipment to the destination   specified in the shipping instructions submitted to the Clearing House   are the responsibility of the buyer. Any reduction in freight charges   that may result from a diversion is not subject to billing adjustment   through the Clearing House. Any applicable surcharges noted by the   rail carrier shall be considered as part of the freight rate and can   be billed to the buyer through the CME Clearing House. If within two (2) Business Days of the receipt of the Notice of Intent   the buyer has not designated a destination, or if during that time the   buyer and seller fail to agree on a negotiated freight charge, the   seller shall treat the destination as Chicago, Illinois. If the buyer   does not designate a carrier or routing, the seller shall select same   according to normal trade practices. To complete delivery, the seller   must deposit with the Clearing House a Delivery Notice, a uniform   straight bill of lading (or a copy thereof) and written information   specifying grade, a tally of pieces of each length, board feet by   sizes and total board feet. The foregoing documents must be received   by the Clearing House postmarked within fourteen (14) Business Days of   the date of receipt of shipping instructions. In addition, within one (1) Business Day after acceptance by the   railroad, the Clearing House must receive information (via a telephone   call, facsimile or electronic transmission) from the seller giving the   car number, piece count by length, unit size, total board footage and   date of acceptance. The ￼date of acceptance by the railroad is the   date of the bill of lading, signed and/or stamped by the originating   carrier, except when determined otherwise by the Clearing House. For some commodities you can't get physical delivery (for instance, Cheese futures won't deliver piles of cheese to your door, for reasons that may be obvious) 6003.A. Final Settlement There shall be no delivery of cheese in settlement of this contract.   All contracts open as of the termination of trading shall be cash   settled based upon the USDA monthly weighted average price in the U.S.   for cheese. The reported USDA monthly weighted average price for   cheese uses both 40 pound cheddar block and 500 pound barrel prices. CME gold futures will deliver to a licensed depository, so you would have to arrange for delivery from the depository (they'll issue you a warrant), assuming you really want a 100 troy oz. bar of gold: CONTRACT SPECIFICATIONS The contract for delivery on futures contracts shall be one hundred   (100) troy ounces of gold with a weight tolerance of 5% either higher   or lower. Gold delivered under this contract shall assay to a minimum   of 995 fineness and must be a brand approved by the Exchange. Gold meeting all of the following specifications shall be deliverable   in satisfaction of futures contract delivery obligations under this   rule: Either one (1) 100 troy ounce bar, or three (3) one (1) kilo bars. Gold must consist of one or more of the Exchange’s Brand marks, as provided in Chapter 7, current at the date of the delivery of   contract. Each bar of Eligible gold must have the weight, fineness, bar number, and brand mark clearly incised on the bar. The weight may be   in troy ounces or grams. If the weight is in grams, it must be   converted to troy ounces for documentation purposes by dividing the   weight in grams by 31.1035 and rounding to the nearest one hundredth   of a troy ounce. All documentation must illustrate the weight in troy   ounces. Each Warrant issued by a Depository shall reference the serial number and name of the Producer of each bar. Each assay certificate issued by an Assayer shall certify that each bar of gold in the lot assays no less than 995 fineness and weight of   each bar and the name of the Producer that produced each bar. Gold must be delivered to a Depository by a Carrier as follows: a. directly from a Producer; b. directly from an Assayer, provided that such gold is accompanied by   an assay certificate of such Assayer; or c. directly from another Depository; provided, that such gold was   placed in such other Depository pursuant to paragraphs (a) or (b)   above." "Debit Cards have a certain processing delay, ""lag time"", before the transaction from the vendor completes with your bank. In the US it's typically 3 business days but I have seen even a 15 day lag from Panera Bread. I guess in the UK, payment processors have similar processing delays. A business is not obliged to run its payment processing in realtime, as that's very expensive. Whatever be the lag time, your bank is supposed to cover the payment you promised through your card. Now if you don't have agreements in place (for example, overdraft) with your bank, they will likely have to turn down payments that exceed your available balance. Here is the raw deal: In the end, the responsibility to ensure that your available balance is enough is upon you (and whether you have agreements in place to handle such situations) So what happened is very much legal, a business is not obliged to run its payment processing in realtime and no ethics are at stake. To ensure such things do not happen to me, I used to use a sub-account from which my debit card used to get paid. I have since moved to credit cards as the hassle of not overdrawing was too much (and overdraft fees from banks in the US are disastrous, especially for people who actually need such a facility)" "You are right, if by ""a lot of time"" you mean a lot of occasions lasting a few milliseconds each. This is one of the oldest arbitrages in the book, and there's plenty of people constantly on the lookout for such situations, hence they are rare and don't last very long. Most of the time the relationship is satisfied to within the accuracy set by the bid-ask spread. What you write as an equality should actually be a set of inequalities.  Continuing with your example, suppose 1 GBP ~ 2 USD, where the market price to buy GBP (the offer) is $2.01 and to sell GBP (the bid) is $1.99.  Suppose further that 1 USD ~ 2 EUR, and the market price to buy USD is EUR2.01 and to sell USD is EUR1.99.  Then converting your GBP to EUR in this way requires selling for USD (receive $1.99), then sell the USD for EUR (receive EUR3.9601).  Going the other way, converting EUR to GBP, it will cost you EUR4.0401 to buy 1 GBP.  Hence, so long as the posted prices for direct conversion are within these bounds, there is no arbitrage." "Quite a few Bank in India allow Funds Transfer via ATM. One has to first register the beneficiary account and wait for 24 hrs before transacting. However it looks like ""Indian Bank"" currently does not offer this service. You can call up Indian Bank and ask if they provide this service.  Alternativly use the Internet Banking to transfer funds to CitiBank or any other Bank in India." Short answer: No. Some of those 'automatic' payments you've agreed to (presumably by signing a PAD form) are initiated in batch by the company whom you're buying from (phone company, cable company etc). So no, the bank has no indication from one day to the next what is coming through.  And the request goes from say, your cable company to THEIR merchant bank to YOUR bank. Typically you have a monthly bill date which is fixed, and they should have terms established when it is due.  If a payment comes back NSF they can retry once - but only for the same amount and I believe it is 14 days from the initial payment attempt.  It makes it predictable, and you'd figure banks would clue in and start to predict for you when things may come out - but strictly speaking your bank doesn't know when or how much. It is a rather complex system, but here is a rough summary. Interbank tranfers ultimately require a transfer of reserves at the central bank. As a concrete example, the bank of england system is the rtgs. Only the clearing banks and similar (e.g. bacs) have access to rtgs. You can send a chaps payment fairly quickly, but that costs. Chaps immediately triggers an rtgs transfer once the sending bank agrees and so you can be certain that the money is being paid.  Hence its use for large amounts. Bacs also sits on the rtgs but to keep costs down it batches tranfers up. Because we are talking about bank reserve movements, checks have to be in place and that can take time. Furthermore the potential for fraud is higher than chaps since these are aggregrated transactions a layer removed, so a delay reduces the chance of payment failing after apparently being sent. Faster payments is a new product by bacs that speeds up the bacs process by doing a number of transfers per day. Hence the two hour clearing. For safety it can only be used for up to 10k. Second tier banks will hold accounts with clearing banks so they are another step down. Foreign currency transfers require the foreign Central Bank reserve somewhere, and so must be mediated by at least one clearing bank in that country. Different countries are at different stages in their technology.  Uk clearing is 2h standard now but US is a little behind I believe.  Much of Europe is speeding up. Rather like bitcoin clearing, you have a choice between speed and safety. If you wait you are more certain the transaction is sound and have more time to bust the transfer. tl;dr: Be patient, money is probably sitting somewhere, and it will eventually be credited back to your account. I had a similar problem about 10 years ago.  I sent an international wire transfer, from my own bank account in Germany to my bank account in Central America. I had done this before, and there had been no issues, but in this case, even though all the information was correct, the bank rejected the wire because it was above $10K, and in that case, the bank needs written proof from the owner of the receiving account (me) , and so didn't know where the funds were coming from. I had to call the local Sparkasse bank in Germany, as well as an intermediary bank in London to sort it all out, and in total, had to wait about 3-4 weeks to get the money back in my Sparkasse bank account.  At one point I thought I may never see that money back, especially since there was an intermediary bank to deal with, but it all worked out in the end. My bank (USAA) moves money to and from a USAA brokerage account instantly. They also have instant transfers from their money market funds to checking, savings, and brokerage. It takes the 3 days to go to another institution, though. "[This is the simple solution.](http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=3041628)  ""Since the Securities and Exchange Act requires that all orders must be intended to execute there's a simple way to prevent this sort of nanosecond game, where any part of the strategy involves ""flashing"" an order that isn't really intended to execute and thus clear through the exchange: Force all orders to be valid for two full seconds or until executed.""" I assume the same criteria apply for this as your previous question. You want to physically transfer in excess of 50,000 USD multiple times a week and you want the transportation mechanism to be instant or very quick. I don't believe there is any option that won't raise serious red flags with the government entities you cross the boundaries of. Even a cheque, which a person in the comments of OP's question suggests, wouldn't be sufficient due to government regulation requiring banks to put holds on such large amounts. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_transfer: The entity wishing to do a transfer approaches a bank and gives the bank the order to transfer a certain amount of money. IBAN and BIC codes are given as well so the bank knows where the money needs to be sent.  The sending bank transmits a message, via a secure system (such as SWIFT or Fedwire), to the receiving bank, requesting that it effect payment according to the instructions given.  The message also includes settlement instructions. The actual transfer is not instantaneous: funds may take several hours or even days to move from the sender's account to the receiver's account.  Either the banks involved must hold a reciprocal account with each other, or the payment must be sent to a bank with such an account, a correspondent bank, for further benefit to the ultimate recipient.  Banks collect payment for the service from the sender as well as from the recipient. The sending bank typically collects a fee separate from the funds being transferred, while the receiving bank and intermediate banks through which the transfer travels deduct fees from the money being transferred so that the recipient receives less than what the sender sent. The last point may not be relevant in domestic transfers. "This seems almost overkill, but if you want to... I suppose one thing you could do is create a separate money in transit account, similar to Account Payable and Account Receivable. In your bookkeeping, transfer the money from the source account to the holding account on the date that the source bank withdraws it, and then transfer the money to the destination account on the date that the target bank deposits it. This both makes it clear that there is money going between places, and ensures that the daily balance on each ""physical"" account is accurate. For cash withdrawals and deposits, I'd just use the date when you make the withdrawal, since that is the day from which the money is available in the new location rather than the old one. Note: I don't know if this is the ""proper"" way to do it in a random jurisdiction, but I doubt being this explicit can get you into trouble." You mentioned BoA. I have had BoA accounts for about ten years. All of my transfers between accounts are immediate. I have never had to wait with BoA.  Scottrade Accounts are the worst in this respect. Once I had to wait 8 days. PayPal come in a close second for making you wait.