Lead time for electronic payments

If you use the electronic payments (epay) functions in Microsoft Money, you may notice that for many banks, the online payment takes four or five days to get paid.

This is due to a decision that the banks make. In general, a new payee will start with the 4/5 day delay so that the Bill Pay service has time to process a new payee. If the Bill Pay service determines it can pay faster, then it can tell Money to decrease the lead time for that payee.

If Money is using the bank's bill pay service, then the bank needs to
contact Microsoft to change the days-to-pay value for their bill pay
service. On the other hand if Money is actually using a different bill pay service (e.g. MSN Bill Pay), then it is their policy that is taking effect.

Thanks to Mark for the reasons behind the lead time