Inspiration
Most of us have walked up to a bank branch only to find the doors locked for a holiday we hadn't heard of. It happens even more when you live abroad, travel, or send money between countries. Each country publishes its bank holidays in its own place and format. The U.S. uses the Federal Reserve's holiday schedule. The UK has separate bank holiday lists for England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. India's holidays change by state and appear in the Reserve Bank of India's regional holiday matrix. We wanted one simple place to ask a simple question: are banks open today?
What it does
Banks Open Today is a website that shows whether banks are open, by country and date. You pick a country, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, India, the UAE or Australia, and see whether banks there are open today or on another date you choose. The live site is at banksopentoday.com.
How we built it
We built it as a website with a page for each country. Each page is organised around the same question, so a reader can move from one country to another without learning a new layout. The aim is for every answer to match the official national calendars.
Challenges
- No two countries work the same way. Some holidays apply nationwide. Others apply to one region or state, as in the UK nations or the Indian states.
- Weekend rules differ. A holiday that falls on a weekend may move to a weekday in one country and not in another. In the U.S., the Federal Reserve treats Saturday and Sunday holidays differently.
- Dates change. Some holidays are announced or adjusted during the year, so the information has to be checked again rather than set once.
- Keeping it simple. The hardest design decision was what to leave out. Most visitors want one answer, open or closed, not a wall of footnotes.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Turning a set of scattered official calendars into a single yes-or-no answer that works the same way in every country we cover.
What we learned
Even the word "weekend" means different things in different countries. And "bank holiday" in the UK, "Federal Reserve holiday" in the U.S. and "holiday under the Negotiable Instruments Act" in India each come with their own rules.
What's next
- Add more countries
- Make regional differences clearer where holidays vary within a country
- Make it easier to look further ahead, for people planning transfers or travel
Built with
- A website
- Official holiday calendars published by central banks and governments
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