Let's talk payments. More specifically, how long payments take to be processed ⏱.
SEPA payments 💶
Payments in Europe run through a system that works with batches and settlements. Every player has their own slots to send and collect money which is why payments do not arrive instantly. In fact, the system turns off at night and during the weekends 😨. Generally a payment arrives within a max of 1 working day.
The good thing is that the European Payment Council (EPC) announced that 600 banks across Europe will offer Instant Payment support, but only bunq and 20 other banks (including ABN AMRO) have already gone live. More info about Instant Payments check out this link here.
bunq payments 🌈
We prefer payments to be instant for everything within bunq (from bunq to bunq), so you never have to worry about payment delays. We've also created a workaround that uses iDEAL or SOFORT for payments made from other banks to bunq (evenings and weekends included)! This applies for top-ups to your account or for others to pay you.
For more information on both options check out:
- Top-up
- Requests
- Here's some more information on the SOFORT payments
Priority payments ❗
So... how do others get money sent fast? They generally do this through Priority Payments. When we started, we took a look and decided not to support them because they involve a lot of work that isn't worth the reward (as they are no longer a fast option today). In reality, when you use them towards bunq they don't actually speed anything up but rather take longer to arrive than a regular payment! This is because we have to process them manually. We generally advise against using them since they cost extra and won't benefit you in any way. If you would like your money to arrive faster, just use a normal SEPA payment, and for even faster real time transactions, check out iDEAL payments 👍.
International/SWIFT payments 🌎
When thinking of non-SEPA payments, there's one thing left to cover... International Payments! As we're still a young player we decided to launch with a focus on the SEPA area (the only region we support at this time). This means that payments in other currencies can't be sent to bunq unless the sending party first converts them into EUR. International Payments can also take longer than 1 working day to arrive. This is because every bank in the processing chain towards us has their own unique processing times (sometimes up to 5+ days depending on the number of links in the chain). You will probably also need our BIC/SWIFT code in this case.
Be aware that the use of priority payments and SWIFT payments are at the user's own risk and we do not provide any guarantees with regard to (the processing of) these types of payments.
