Isn't it ironic: Money isn't transactional
time to read 2 min | 247 words

I write a transactional database for a living, and the best example of why we want transactions is transferring money between accounts. It is ironic, therefore, that there is no such thing as transactions for money transfers in the real world.

If you care to know why, go back 200 years and consider how a bank would operate in an environment without instant communication. I would actually recommend doing that, it is a great case study in distributed system design. For example, did you know that the Templars used cryptography to send money almost a thousand years ago?

Recently I was reviewing my bank transactions and I found the following surprise. This screenshot is from yesterday (Dec 18), and it looks like a payment that I made is still “stuck in the tubes” two and a half weeks later.

 

I got in touch with the supplier in question to apologize for the delay. They didn’t understand what I was talking about. Here is what they see when they go to their bank, they got the money.

 

For fun, look at the number of different dates that you can see in their details.

Also, as of right now, my bank account still shows the money as pending approval (to be sent out from my bank).

I might want to recommend that they use a different database. Or maybe I should just convince the bank to approve the payment by the time of the next invoice and see if I can get a bit of that infinite money glitch.

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