[zx2c4]

I should have written a more clear question. I read the page, and I understand that now you're doing two-day instead of seven-day transfers.

What I'm wondering is, "how is this possible?" How is Stripe now moving the money faster than before? What change made this possible? Did the stewards of the ACH system make a change that allows this? Is Stripe advancing funds ahead of time based on some kind of credit? Was the seven-day policy basically arbitrary before, and so changing it to two-day basically involves changing an integer somewhere in the codebase and updating documentation? Or is it something else happening at a different layer? More generally, what are the pieces at play in transferring money that influence transfer time? And which of these pieces has Stripe interacted with in order to transfer funds faster?

[dangrossman]

This is how most businesses have been funded for the past 30+ years AFAIK. Merchant account transactions are batched and settled nightly, then ACH'd to the merchant the next day. You get the money 1-3 banking days after charging someone. Stripe was the exception to the norm, and now they're doing what everyone else does. Holding onto your money before transferring it to you is something other merchant account providers only do on a case-by-case basis for accounts they consider at high risk for fraud.

[oroup]

Wild ass guess here: keep funds at all the major banks and do intra-bank transfers which are instant. We've considered something similar. You need enough cash to keep a pool at every bank large enough to cover transfers and you need a big enough customer base that the net flow into or out of your account at a particular bank is small enough that you can rebalance periodically.