FNB under fire over “available” account balances

crxboy said:
Who earns the interest on the "escrow" while it idles? Just curious
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I spend FNB's money by pushing as much as possible through my CC. And then settle the total amount every month.

The pending transactions are a bit of an irritation, only in that WTF does it take so many days for some to clear?
 
I honestly don't give a p*** when the merchant does their debits, that should be between the bank and them. If I had funds and my transaction is approved that's where it should end and my balance decreased immediately so I know when I don't have funds anymore. Done. This tos where you have 14 things sitting in Pending for 900 years is BS and then one day suddenly you get a SMS about having to deposit is clearly how they get you. AND you pay a hefty fee when u go below 0. In my case, for instance, i move everything to my Flexi to decrease the home loan as soon as the debits are done for the month and run on sub 1k in my transactional for 90% of the month then move over when i want to buy something. It's a pot kak.
 
Dylan_G said:
Don't they already do that? The "available" balance decreases immediately...
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On your cheque account, yes, the pending tells you what hasn't been taken yet, but your balance reflects what is left after those pending deductions have been made, so you know exactly how much you really have. This isn't the case with credit cards though; the balance does not include pending amounts, so the pending transactions have to be manually deducted from your balance in order to know what you have left. Stupid system really.
 
Bad Ballie said:
On your cheque account, yes, the pending tells you what hasn't been taken yet, but your balance reflects what is left after those pending deductions have been made, so you know exactly how much you really have. This isn't the case with credit cards though; the balance does not include pending amounts, so the pending transactions have to be manually deducted from your balance in order to know what you have left. Stupid system really.
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What bank is this?
 
crxboy said:
Discovery Bank has the same ****. "Balance", "Available" and "Pending Transactions" ( I can have pending transactions sitting for days) - what grinds me is that the "Pending" is not subtracted from "Available" until the "Pending" is processed.

Wake up. I spent it; you know it. Give me my real-time available balance, you shits (pending transactions you can take care of where I do not see).
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You might not have actually spent it, the banks don't know until the merchant settles. The initial authorization is for the merchant to know that the money is available (and reserved), but if the transaction fails (with the PoS terminal having gone offline) or some other issue happens, the bank can't guarantee that you actually went through with the transaction until they receive the settlement request from the merchant.

This has caught out people at times, when the authorization happens but the settlement fails and as far as the customer is concerned, they "paid" whilst the merchant claims to not have been paid. A few years back a few shops (and I think fast food outlets) used to have notices up trying to explain this to people ("a message from your bank that the money has been reserved doesn't actually mean that we've been paid" type messages.).
 
Bad Ballie said:
On your cheque account, yes, the pending tells you what hasn't been taken yet, but your balance reflects what is left after those pending deductions have been made, so you know exactly how much you really have. This isn't the case with credit cards though; the balance does not include pending amounts, so the pending transactions have to be manually deducted from your balance in order to know what you have left. Stupid system really.
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As I understand it, the "Available" amount on a CC is what you can spend. This is your credit limit minus the amount spent (both amounts settled and amounts authorized). Your "Balance" is the amount that has been settled to merchants, that's what you owe the bank / the bank owes you at that point in time.
 
sjm said:
As I understand it, the "Available" amount on a CC is what you can spend. This is your credit limit minus the amount spent (both amounts settled and amounts authorized). Your "Balance" is the amount that has been settled to merchants, that's what you owe the bank / the bank owes you at that point in time.
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Correct, that is also my understanding, but on many occasions I will make a purchase with my credit card and the 'Available Balance' does not update at all for anything up to 2 or 3 days, and the transaction doesn't reflect in the transaction history either, so I have to then start doing manual calculations to figure out how much I actually have left. With my cheque account the transaction reflects immediately and the available balance updates as well.
 
crxboy said:
Who earns the interest on the "escrow" while it idles? Just curious
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So the money only exists as debt on my card, the merchant does not have it. So i'm paying interest on the amount.
On a credit card you pay at the end of the month on what is still owing... so the likelihood I did pay interest on at least one of these amounts even though the bank hasn't paid the money to anyone.

Its the merchants fault though.

Some more context though... the specific amount if for a bag of coffee beans (R410) that I purchased at a printing shop. They don't sell coffee but had the beans on display and a price. I wanted those beans and there did seem to be some confusion as to how they would charge me for the beans... but I did tap my card on their payment device and the payment was approved.

Quite hilarious that they have not banked the amount yet... I see they still have the beans on sale, I'm tempted to go get another bag.
 
Bad Ballie said:
Correct, that is also my understanding, but on many occasions I will make a purchase with my credit card and the 'Available Balance' does not update at all for anything up to 2 or 3 days, and the transaction doesn't reflect in the transaction history either, so I have to then start doing manual calculations to figure out how much I actually have left. With my cheque account the transaction reflects immediately and the available balance updates as well.
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Thats not great.
i think the same thing is happening to me and I should just use my credit card like that. Its putting me in a lot of debt.
 
W@P said:
The solution is easy: just take the R500k CC limit offer when you log in next time.
Then you won't have to worry or guess how much you have left to spend.
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Just joking; don't do this.


zerocool2009 said:
Credit cards in short make you learn to use your money wisely! Its either your friend or your enemy!
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Friend or enemy, you are 100% correct.
 
This thread just shows that the qualifying criteria for debit/credit cards is too low.

If you don't understand how your financial instruments work, go back to using cash.
 
Napalm2880 said:
This thread just shows that the qualifying criteria for debit/credit cards is too low.

If you don't understand how your financial instruments work, go back to using cash.
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Which posts exactly?
 
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