>I almost said, "Ah, got it", but now I'm not sure. Who is the 'vendor' in the case of my making a visa payment to my own bank? Bank of Nova Scotia has my account, and Bank of Nova Scotia has my visa account. So, in this instance, who is the 'Bank' and who is the 'Vendor'? My bank account is debited immediately on screen, but my visa account is not immediately credited on screen.
>
>It seems like ScotiaBank is just moving money from one pocket to the other, but taking a lot of time putting in the left pocket after taking it out of the right pocket.
>
>I'm probably missing something, but I'm not sure what.

Yeah, what you're missing is that banks make a lot of money (or used to, when there were serious interest rates) on all that money that's in abeyance. They can do short-term lending of that money at comparatively high interest rates.

Tamar