Penfed External Payment Turnaround

[Anonymous]

Those of you with with a Penfed checking account what has been your experience with external payments for loans or credit cards from other lenders. I have a savings account with Penfed but no checking yet because of fees. I have NFCU currently but their posting times for payments are a little ridiculous. Not to mention the lack of pulling from an external account into my checking. Thinking about opening a checking account and moving over to Penfed for my main hub but wanted some input on posting time frames.

[DaveInAZ]

Not really clear what you're asking here. When you say "external payments for loans or credit cards from other lenders" do you mean a payment sent from a Penfed account to a Bank of America credit card, as an example? I think all credit unions are pretty much all the same,  a minimum of 2-3 days to be credited to the external account. Chase can get your payment there the next day with their bill pay, but I only have a Chase account 6 months per year for their new account bonus. I'm not a fan of Penfed's checking with minimum of $500 balance or $500 direct deposit monthly to avoid a 10 dollar fee. I have a Penfed savings but closed my checking as there are much better checking accounts, DCU checking is completely free with no minimum balance or DD requirements.

And I always pull payments to my credit accounts by linking a bank account on the credit account's online service, because the payment is always credited on the day you specify but can take a day or two to actually be deducted from your bank account. I like paying on Fridays as the payment is rarely deducted from the bank account until Monday or even Tuesday. It's not a cash flow issue, just an old habit from when they used to actually pay you decent interest for your money.

[Anonymous]

Yes that's what I meant by external transfers. NFCU bank to bank transfers are painfully slow. I'm looking for a faster alternative to NFCU when it comes to transfers and to be clearer pulls from other lenders to make loan payments, CC payments, etc. I also am looking for early DD. I currently have it with NFCU and read Penfed also offers it. I know from reading the forums Alliant has fast transfers but doesn't do early DD. DCU is local to me about 45min drive but not much data regarding using them as a hub for banking and their transfer speed. However the two day early DD is nice.

[DaveInAZ]

When I had payroll DD into Penfed I got it 1 day early, now I have it going to DCU and also get it one early. But I work for the local county government and they're probably not as fast in processing payroll as private employers, there's a county HR portal where I can log in and see my paycheck & other info, I don't see my paycheck there until the morning before payday, which is when I see it deposited into DCU. But early DD isn't that important to me, it's nice but you still have the same time period between paydays whether the DD is credited on payday or 1 or 2 days early.

I don't use the DCU bill payer service that often but I do for my BoA Visa as BoA makes it a pain to pay on their website if you don't have a BoA checking account. I had a payment scheduled from DCU to my BoA Visa for today, I saw it deducted from my DCU checking this morning. I just logged into BoA and see the DCU payment as a pending credit wow, I didn't realize DCU was that fast. DCU does allow push/pull ACH transfers between DCU and external bank accounts. I joined DCU last fall as they gave me a 65 month car loan for a one year old used car at 2.99%. Another great benefit of DCU is they pay 5.12% interest on the first $1k in their savings account, great for a rainy day fund. If DCU is a 45 minute drive they belong to the credit union co-op shared branch network. I regularly get cash reimbursements for buying things for the local food bank, I can make a cash deposit at a local credit union here in southern Arizona and it's instantly credited to my DCU account. https://co-opcreditunions.org/locator/?ref=co-opsharedbranch.org&sc=1