Then I guess we have to question why those .01% of transactions need human intervention at all. It seem like .01% of requests to Google Search don't need human interaction, why does money, now that it's mostly just an entry in a database somewhere (or on its way to be)? If it's a matter of approvals, then those should be codified in rules that can be expressed in code. That may be difficult for laws, the general refrain being 'laws aren't code', but money transfer is just a list of rules, transactions, settlement dates and so on.
As a general guideline I have deleted the word “just” from my vocabulary when talking about anything engineering related. Doubly so when it’s a system used directly by humans. And double again when there are legacy systems involved that weren’t designed to have human judgement deleted from their operation.
Here’s a fun example of the complexity even when there are live humans in the loop. I’m Canadian. My client is Canadian. I sent him an invoice using QuickBooks with the option to pay using QuickBooks Payments. He pays the invoice sitting at the table with me and a transaction shows up in my books but no money in my bank account. That’s normal, it usually takes a few days to clear. A week passes and still no cash. I call QuickBooks and they provide me with an ACH tracing number; they tell me that they released the funds days ago. I call my own bank and provide them the tracing number, my bank tells me they have no record of that transaction ever coming to them. I call QuickBooks back and escalate. They insist that my bank screwed up and lost it and provide me with the same tracing number. At least after escalating I now have a direct line to a case manager at QB. Back and forth, back and forth, and eventually I get an email from a VP of Compliance at Chase Manhattan asking that I call them.
Now… I don’t do business with Chase. My client doesn’t do business with Chase. QuickBooks does business with Chase and Chase wants to talk to me about financing Iranian terrorists and FINCEN. Chase happily accepted the money from QB and gave them a receipt for it and then the money disappeared into a mysterious compliance department who, apparently, can’t legally tell me why I was flagged or what I can do to ensure this doesn’t happen again. But after a quick chat about my business and relationship with my client the money magically showed up in my bank account.
Because with transactions things have to match and sometimes data errors happen.
Take something really simple like a bank cash transfer. Do you really think that no one ever accidentally puts in a typo in an account number or an amount?
If that happens then the transaction either fails or doesn't do as desired. Either way someone has to manually resolve it.
Take that and put it on steroids for securities transactions.
