[TuringNYC]

Unlike Visa and Mastercard, I noticed that AMEX transaction notifications are near-instantaneous. There is something so magical about a notification popping up on my phone/watch literally the second i swipe a card. I always wondered about the layers on the stack which V/MC must have which AMEX doesnt.

[miki123211]

> Unlike Visa and Mastercard, I noticed that AMEX transaction notifications are near-instantaneous.

No idea where you bank, but my Visa notifications are instantaneous, so the network is clearly capable of that. I'm with a modern European bank though, I wouldn't be surprised if the mainframe-lowing US banks that do everything via overnight batch jobs are incapable of this.

With that said, there are places which straight up won't send your transaction to the network at purchasing time. Apple[1] is one notable example. They seem to have a cron job that runs at midnight and does billing for that day. This is really annoying if you're buying an expensive Apple product and increase your card limits for one day only.

I've even seen places that do extremely-low-value transactions "on faith" - the transaction is entirely offline, it gets send to the network the next day, and if it is rejected, your card number goes on a blacklist until you visit the company's office in person and settle the debt.

[nulbyte]

> I'm with a modern European bank though, I wouldn't be surprised if the mainframe-lowing US banks that do everything via overnight batch jobs are incapable of this.

I wouldn't be surprised if your European bank still relies quite heavily on its mainframes. The mainframe offers high availability, reliability, and, contrary to popular belief, high throughput. Batch processing is just one thing they're good at; real-time processing at high speed is another.

[j16sdiz]

You missed the footnote for [1].

Did you meant Apple Card, Apple Pay or the Apple Store?

[lxgr]

It's probably less about layers and more about the different number of stakeholders.

Visa/MC transactions go through at least four systems (merchant, merchant payment service provider/acquirer, Visa/MC, issuer processor); Amex is merchant acquirer and card issuer in one, so there is no network and accordingly at most three parties involved (merchant, merchant PSP, Amex).

That said, some of my Visa/MC cards have very snappy notifications too. In principle, the issuer or issuer processor will know about the transaction outcome even before the merchant (they're the one responding, after all), and I definitely have some cards where I get the notification at the same time and sometimes before the POS displays "approved".

[williamdclt]

As others say, it's not a matter of Visa VS Amex. I use both a Mastercard and a Visa with a neobank in Europe, and I get instant notifications. Must be more something to do with the bank (US banking is famously so behind, but I also see days-long delays with traditional european banks).

Even more magical: when sending money to someone I'm physically present with, I hear their notification before the "money sent" animation finished on my own phone

[reaperducer]

Unlike Visa and Mastercard, I noticed that AMEX transaction notifications are near-instantaneous. There is something so magical about a notification popping up on my phone/watch literally the second i swipe a card. I always wondered about the layers on the stack which V/MC must have which AMEX doesnt.

Must be your bank, because both my Visa and MasterCard ping my phone instantaneously, too.

[kdmtctl]

Some smaller banks upload available balances to processors and perform clearing later in a back office only. They just don't have a hook to link a notification and send it only after the actual settlement.

[TuringNYC]

>> Must be your bank, because both my Visa and MasterCard ping my phone instantaneously, too.

Well thats sort of the thing...with Visa and MC, there is an extra layer or two of the bank or Fidelity Information Services. With Amex, they own the full stack end to end.

[akira2501]

Your card limit gets checked on every transaction. There doesn't seem to be a technical reason why information flow back to me should be limited in any way. If the extra layer fails to work the transaction fails to pass.

[mschuster91]

> Your card limit gets checked on every transaction.

Nope. The merchant can choose the level of verification - in some cases, like copying the card with an imprinter [1] or running phone transactions (yes, that is possible - it's called MOTO [2]), it's obviously impossible to check card limits.

Downside of CNP transactions is, the merchant is fully liable for anything from fraud over chargebacks to exceeding limits.

And then you got card-present transactions but the network connectivity is down for whatever reasons... been a while since I messed with that, but at least for German cards you could configure the terminal to store the account details for later submission when connectivity was restored.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_imprinter

[2] https://docs.adyen.com/point-of-sale/mail-and-telephone-orde...

[ErneX]

I remember being charged after a while when paying for bus/metro tickets in some places, I think those machines process transactions by batches or something.

[__turbobrew__]

I have a visa card with a Canadian bank and get transaction messages within 5 seconds of payment usually. Maybe it is a per bank thing?

[phrotoma]

It's a per country thing. Card txns in the US are bananas arcane byzantine nightmares. (Source: worked at Canadas largest bank on txn processing software).

[spacebanana7]

I also get transaction notifications at a similar speed in the UK, in pretty much all of my bank accounts.

[csomar]

AMEX is the bank. For Visa/Mastercard, the latency is probably due to the bank they have to route the transaction through.