Electronic funds transfer, at least between Canadian and non-Canadian banks, is
surprisingly slow and expensive. The last transaction I did was with a company
in Paris; I got dinged almost $40.00 CDN to transfer around $600.00 CDN to this
company, and the transaction took three days, *after* they finally managed to
get the transfer info correct. And of course, not all of the information that
was needed was supplied; French banks seem to leave out pertinent info that
Canadian banks require in order to process the transaction (like the full name
of the bank, ferinstance -- the Parisian company kept giving me acronyms or
abbreviations, neither of which my bank was able to decipher correctly, even
though TD has one of the largest foreign transactions sections in the world).
You'd think that, with a worldwide electronic network, each bank and branch
would be assigned an absolutely unique ID which would be all that's required to
successfully "hook up."
Aren't "electronic transactions" supposed to take place at the speed of light?
Garth
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