Bank Account Sweeping

It's a device for maximising the amount interest you earn, or to look at it differently, minimising the amount of interest you don't earn.

It requires two accounts, a current account and a savings account, it being assumed that the current account pays virtually no interest compared to the other one.

Normally what you would do is try to arrange that most of your money is in the savings account, while ensuring there is enough in the current account for expected day to day requirements.

"Sweeping" is where the bank does this automatically for you. All you do is specify a threshold, so that at the end of each day any current account balance over that amount is transferred to ("swept into") the deposit account, and any balance under that amount is "swept" back. By specifying different upper and lower thresholds you can add hysteresis into the system, thus reducing the number of transfers, should they incur a charge.

It may mean the method, whereby any balance above a certain level is automatically transferred to an account earning interest, and vice versa if the account is below a certain level (which can be zero).