It's like a bank though.
In a bank if everyone attempted to pull money out at the same time the system would crash (There isn't the $$ stored to do it).... Same here, yet it is more temperamental. If we all pull our PED out in 1 week the system would crash (MA don't have enough available cash).
So yeh as mentioned, the financial reports record a certain liability for expected withdrawals and these are based on past experience. IIRC it was slightly up from usual in the previous year but I think deposits were up too or something like that. In other words MA budget only for what they predict people will withdraw, not what they in theory
could withdraw, TT value of the account or otherwise.
It sounds scary I know but to try and throw a note of calm into the room, aside from a real threat of the company going under (and the financial report doesn't indicate any issues of this sort), then I'm not sure what would really cause any sort of "run on the bank" as it were. The other thing to remember is the minium withdraw amount which, even if such a scenario were to happen, would mean a lot of players couldn't withdraw anyhow, especially if they were unable to hawk their wares to other players as they leap overboard, reducing them to needing to TT their stuff - something that may not get them over the minimum amount.
Anyhow, that side topic out of the way. While I don't think it has ever been confirmed, it's long been speculated that the long delay on withdrawals has nothing to do with waiting for cash to be available, or even the time to check the transactions/history of the player's activity. The theory is that it's to do with avoiding a scenario where a player could make a credit card deposit, withdraw it, then raise a card use dispute with the credit card provider over the initial payment. i.e. MA might have to pay back (to the card provider) the money deposited, which has already exited the game via a player withdrawal.
There was a situation many years ago where someone started offering a service where players could move PED out of the game over to second life credits. I believe they were told that, should an issue with a deposit occur, if they'd helped move the money out of the game, they'd be liable to cover the bill. After that they only allowed cash to flow into, rather than out of Entropia (i.e Linden Dollars to PED but
not PED to Linden Dollars). If you want to look it up, it was called Dreamland Stock Exchange and was an Anshe Chung project.
Anyhow, to round up, I suspect a payment to speed up deposit wouldn't help with the described scenario (Depo $1000, pay $100, remove $900, claim the deposit was fraudulent - still be up $900). So I doubt MA would go for a speed up payment, if indeed this really is the reason why withdraws take so long [as far as I know it's never been more than speculation].
Still, it could simply be that "it isn't in their interests to allow fast withdrawals" and that noone with any law/official clout has ever put the screws into them to do it. This would at least explain why people still have to wait ages for a withdraw even if they've not deposited for years [I'm assuming such scenarios still take ages - I have a feeling I heard of at least one that did].
Hope that helps. It was a nice idea but alas feels like an undesirable (from MA's perspective) sticking plaster to solve a problem that really should just have been fixed properly (semi instant withdrawals) many years ago.
Wistrel