They do have a unique ID number - here it's a BSB number and another
international code, the name of which escapes me just now. The problem is
that every bank seems to have it's own rules about what information it
requires on the destination before it will undertake a 'Swift' transaction.
It's purely bureaucratic - they don't need the phone number of the
girlfriend of the president of the destination bank and the brand of
underpants used by the account holder; they're just being difficult. But,
as a colleague of mine pointed out the other day, the accounting procedures
in my workplace aren't inefficient from the administrative point of view -
they actually dissuade us from spending money. Perhaps the banks don't want
to send our piddling amounts of cash around the world - they'd rather
speculate in the money markets with millions.
It's still quickish and cheaper than Western Union and credits an account
in local currency.
AndrewF
>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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