# How do Australian Banks work?



## serp (10 September 2005)

Hi guys, I've been looking around tonight trying to find some information on how Australian banks conduct transactions between each other. I mean say I'm with Westpac and I want to give my mate $100 who has an account at the ANZ, does the money just get directly transferred between the two banks using some sort of inter-organisational ecommerce system or is it routed through an intermediary? The RBA? or do all the banks of Australia trade retails transactions through some sort of open system that is available to all? Exactly how does it work?!??! Anyone got any web references I could go look up with relevant information on this? Thanks.


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## doctorj (10 September 2005)

http://www.rba.gov.au/PaymentsSystem/australian_payments_system.html


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## stocksontheblock (30 July 2009)

Badly!


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## skyQuake (30 July 2009)

serp said:


> Hi guys, I've been looking around tonight trying to find some information on how Australian banks conduct transactions between each other. I mean say I'm with Westpac and I want to give my mate $100 who has an account at the ANZ, does the money just get directly transferred between the two banks using some sort of inter-organisational ecommerce system or is it routed through an intermediary? The RBA? or do all the banks of Australia trade retails transactions through some sort of open system that is available to all? Exactly how does it work?!??! Anyone got any web references I could go look up with relevant information on this? Thanks.




It travels through a series of interbank and intrabank tubes.


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## gooner (30 July 2009)

Very simply WBC's balance with the RBA reduces whilst the ANZ balance with the RBA increases. These accounts are known as exchange settlement accounts.

If you give your mate $5 billion, then WBC will need to issue some debt or take some money off deposit to put in the exchange settlement account to avoid it going overdrawn.

If you overdraw your account you get a $40 fee if WBC or ANZ overdraw their exchange settlement account, then they get charged a $4m fee by the RBA to make up for all those consumers always being ripped off.


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## Agentm (30 July 2009)

stocksontheblock said:


> Badly!






skyQuake said:


> It travels through a series of interbank and intrabank tubes.




lol


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## skyQuake (30 July 2009)

Agentm said:


> lol




_"...The tubes sir, they're blocked"
"...whatever shall we do?"_
_- Extract from the Great run on banks 2009_


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## Agentm (30 July 2009)

thats when you ring mr wonka!!

and hire these guys


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## jono1887 (30 July 2009)

reminds me of that simpsons episode where Burns has Homer deliver a message and it ends up going back to Burns though those series of tubes


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