Originally Posted by
rufflesinc
Yes I've heard of them but it's 2019 , what technical reason would there be to use them for this scenario? (Chase can do instant transfers with most of their partners so it's not like a heavy IT lift. ) It's not like it's linked to a periodic action like weekly timecards or quarterly reports.
Are they used with issuing of airline tickets? I know AA and UA are famous for taking forever to issue some award tickets.
It’s not exactly difficult but it does require a certain level of integration and for the necessary systems to be built out on both ends. It’s entirely possible those systems have never been built and that doing so would require a big increase in the amount they spend on maintaining them. For instance, a lot of data transfers were built to be done by hand with people on a phone speaking numbers to each other, or sending letters that had to be transcribed! Then the interface logic got updated to take in files on a portable drive, but the code which did all the updates stayed the same. Then they updated it so you could download a file over the internet, but it still only took it in once a day because that’s how long it took for the sender to build up the file and for the recipient to finish processing it.
That kind of thing can continue for a loooong time, especially in industries like banking or airlines where building a replacement requires rebuilding all the interfaces to other companies before you can deploy it. Doing a real update basically requires corporate executives make it a company priority and fund it to match.