To: Brooks Jackson who wrote (10319 ) 9/20/1999 10:25:00 AM From: Gregg Soster Respond to of 20297
I know we've been through this "good funds" thing before, but walk me through it again. How does it work? Who is affected? Is it going to be a customer turn-off, as this story suggests? "good-funds" as the name suggests, means that money the customer in tends to use to pay a bill must in in the account prior to the execution of bill payment being sent. The funds are deducted from the customer's account prior to the actual due date for several reasons: 1. Because the merchant may recieve a lump sum payment for many customers with a remittance advice statement telling them where to post the money, 2. A fraud reduction technique (can't send a check if there is no money), 3. Pre-funded payments drastically reduce customer services questions regarding whether the payment was "sent" by "newbies", There are two significant down-sides to the "good-funds" model, only one of which is ever recognized by reporters or banks. The float issues always is mentioned the second is NEVER mentioned: If Joe consumer sits down on Sunday to pay his bills for the month, he might schedule a payment prior to actually having the funds (imagine that), but he gets paid via direct deposit every 15th and 30th. He schedules a payment for the 17th with money he does not yet have, in "good-funds" he could not do that because it must be pre-funded. This in my opinion is a major stumbling block to reaching the masses who may live on a tight budget. Risk-based allows consumers to let the processor (CKFR or the bank) assume that the money will be there when the check is cashed by the processor. Float goes to the consumer. Many bank systems did not have "real-time" back-end updating (just a couple of years ago); they had to use the risk-based model, now most banks are "real-time" so they want to reduce customer service costs and fraud and risk so banks are going to "good-funds"... bye bye float.