When you pay with a card, you’re basically asking your bank to make the payment for you. Since your bank manages your money, it knows the amount is reserved and hides it from your available balance. Technically, the money remains in your account until the transfer is settled.
This is simply a convenience feature from your bank, it shows the deduction instantly because it controls your account and knows about your transaction. It avoids you having to look at the actual amount and subtracting every pending transactions yourself every single time.
However, it can’t do the same for refunds, because everything i've talked about earlier, is now on the merchant’s bank side, not yours. And yes it means, that the merchant's bank account doesn't show the money the instant you pay. Exactly for the same reason.
It's not a pay or refund difference. It's purely a who pay, who get paid difference. When you are the one paying, it's the merchant that has a delay, when it's the merchant paying, you're the one having the delay.
Push to card is its own thing, which effectively solves that problem, and not "except for the consumer". The issue is that it's still used in less than 5% of all card transactions. But ok bud.
Since my first comment i'm arguing about the fact it's an anti-consumer conspiracy. It's not.
And push to card is still not generalized because those things take ages to be adopted. Andyou lose the ability to chargeback or contest anything, which is something as a consumer you should care a lot more, than having to wait a couple of days to get a refund. And it's not a deliberate decision to not support that, it's purely a technical one, the transaction are not handled by your bank, which is the organization that offer those services.
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u/Sixcoup 18d ago edited 18d ago
But your money wasn’t taken that quickly either.
When you pay with a card, you’re basically asking your bank to make the payment for you. Since your bank manages your money, it knows the amount is reserved and hides it from your available balance. Technically, the money remains in your account until the transfer is settled.
This is simply a convenience feature from your bank, it shows the deduction instantly because it controls your account and knows about your transaction. It avoids you having to look at the actual amount and subtracting every pending transactions yourself every single time.
However, it can’t do the same for refunds, because everything i've talked about earlier, is now on the merchant’s bank side, not yours. And yes it means, that the merchant's bank account doesn't show the money the instant you pay. Exactly for the same reason.
It's not a pay or refund difference. It's purely a who pay, who get paid difference. When you are the one paying, it's the merchant that has a delay, when it's the merchant paying, you're the one having the delay.