Shifting to 7 day payment processing
There’s a big change coming to how we process payments. Starting Friday 26 May 2023, payments to and from other banks will happen every day of the year, including weekends and public holidays.
You may be pretty familiar with how payments happen at the moment… When you make a same-day payment to someone at another bank during the week, it’ll usually show in their account within a couple of hours (as long as it’s made before the daily cut-off time).
But, if it’s during the weekend or on a public holiday, it’ll leave your account straight away, but won’t show in their account until the next business day.
This can be pretty annoying if you need to make an urgent payment or shuffle your money between your accounts with different banks (especially during a long public holiday period like Easter or Christmas and New Years)!
What’s going to happen?
From Friday 26 May 2023, payments will be processed during the day like usual, but it will be 7 days a week, 365 days a year!
This will happen for bill payments, automatic payments, direct credits, and direct debits. It’s not just us either, most other banks will be moving to 7 day payments too!
How could it impact you?
As an example, let’s say you have an automatic payment set up for the 15th of every month. At the moment, when the 15th falls on a weekend or public holiday, the money stays in your account until the next business day. In the future, that payment will go out on the due date, even if it’s the weekend or a public holiday, so you’ll need to make sure there’s enough money in your account.
It may be helpful to check any upcoming monthly payments you have set up, like your power, broadband or rates, and to check if any fall on the weekend. You can set up a reminder to check that your account has enough money for the payment.
There are some payments and processes that will continue to happen on business days only (Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays), including:
- Drawdowns of Personal Loans and Home Loans
- Maturity settlements from Police Credit Union Term Deposits
- Receiving International payments
What isn’t changing?
How payments are made currently will remain the same, including:
- Payments are processed every 2-3 hours during the day.
- Payments from your PCU account are processed if you have sufficient funds in your account.
- Payments from your PCU account into another PCU member’s account are sent and received immediately.
- Payments from other banks will be paid into your PCU account as soon as we receive them. Banks have different payment times so you may receive payments at different times throughout the day. PCU’s cut-off time for outgoing payments is 8pm.
- Incorrect payment amounts or bank account numbers cannot be reversed by the Police Credit Union. You’ll need to seek reimbursement from the payee for any payment errors.
- Scheduled outgoing payments will be processed the morning the payment is due.
We’re updating our General Terms and Conditions to reflect these changes. You can view them here.