With access to banking being a 24/7 thing these days have rules changed about banking hours?

The question is when can a bank debit your account for a check you wrote submitted for payment. If the bank did not receive the check until after normal business hours, can they still debit in that day?

My specific situation is this; I wrote a check for my property taxes and mailed it to the Receiver of Taxes. I was playing the float and not transferring the funds to cover the check until I knew it had been presented. I have overdraft protection, so if I missed there was enough to cover the check. About 12 noon on Monday, I checked my balance to see if the check had been presented and it hadn't. So I made a small withdrawal since my paycheck would be deposited electronically the next morning. That evening I logged in to set up bills to be paid from my paycheck and I noticed a negative balance. Checking activity that check had been posted at 5:04PM! I was able to transfer the funds to cover the check so it removed the negative balance, but I was surprised by the check being debited so late in the day.

Which brings me back to question of when they can debit. Are there any rules or regs that say they have to debit within normal business hours?

I'm not sure if there is a regulation that covers this, but I do know that few business actually physically present checks anymore. We electronically present them in our office, and the debit is immediate. Checks, in many cases, are converted to a form of electronic transfer, which will process whenever it is submitted. Also, I'm don't know where you bank, but my branch is open until 5:30, so it may have been physically presented during their normal business hours.

Yes, the process goes like this. Someone issues a check. Recipient deposits/cashes check. The institution that accepted the check encodes the information and sends an electronic file of all checks to the clearinghouse. The clearinghouse reads in all the transmissions and sorts the checks by account and, in turn, transmits a file to the institution that holds that account. I don't believe this is sent down to the branch level. In other words, all checks issued on BOA accounts will go to a central processing center for BOA.

I'll have to check with my bank on their policy, but I was hoping someone might know of any regs.