§ 4-5. When is a payment order considered received by the bank?

This section determines when the bank is considered to have received a payment order, and that point in time governs several deadlines later in the Act. Your account cannot be debited before the order has been received. On business days, the order is considered received at the moment it is delivered to or registered with your bank. If it is delivered on a day that is not a business day, it is considered received on the first business day afterwards. The bank can also set a cut-off time near the end of the day. If the order arrives after the cut-off time, it is considered received on the next business day.

If it has been agreed that the payment is to be made on a specific day, after a certain period or on the day you make the money available, the order is considered received on the agreed day. If that day is not a business day, the next business day applies. Example: a payer registers an order during a weekend. The order is considered received on the first business day after the weekend, and only then can the account be debited.

The time of receipt is the starting point for the surrounding rules. § 4-7 states that the payer generally cannot cancel the order after the bank has received it. § 4-2 states that a transaction is only authorised if the payer has consented. § 4-3 allows the payer to authorise a payee (betalingsmottaker) to make a series of direct debits (direktebelastninger), and § 4-4 sets requirements for standing payment orders. § 4-6 prohibits the bank from refusing to execute an authorised order when the conditions in the account agreement (kontoavtale) are met. § 4-9 allows you and the bank to agree on spending limits for payment instruments (betalingsinstrument), and § 4-8 sets out rules on confirmation of available funds in the account.

This section is also referred to from § 2-2 on the time and place of payment and from § 3-30 on information about the use of payment services (betalingstjenester). The rule in § 1-9 that the Act cannot be departed from by agreement refers to this section.