Direct deposit on a holiday: when does pay arrive?

Bank holidays of 2026

The closures below come from the Federal Reserve Financial Services holiday schedule. On those days no ACH payment settles, which is what matters for a direct deposit; bank branches may open or not, at each bank’s choice.

Bank holidays of 2027

Three holidays of 2027 fall on weekends. Juneteenth and Christmas are Saturdays, so the banks stay open on Friday; Independence Day is a Sunday, so the banks close on Monday, July 5, 2027. Federal offices follow a different rule and close on both Fridays, as the OPM tables show.

How a payroll gets to your account

A payroll by direct deposit is a batch of ACH credits. The employer, or its payroll provider, sends the file to its bank, the bank passes it into the ACH network, and the network settles each credit on the date the file names: the payday. Payroll files are usually sent one or two business days before that date. A holiday therefore matters twice: it cannot be a settlement day, and it does not count as one of the business days the file needs. For the Christmas holiday of 2026, the FedACH schedule stops processing late on Thursday, December 24, 2026 and resumes on the evening of Sunday, December 27, ready for Monday settlement.

That is why a payroll office closes its books earlier in holiday weeks. To check a deadline yourself, count business days back from the payday with the tool below; it skips weekends and Federal Reserve holidays.

Before or after: the employer’s rule

No federal law says which way a payday moves. 5 U.S.C. 6103 fixes the holidays, the Federal Reserve fixes the bank days, and employers write their own rule, nearly always “the business day before” so that pay is never late. Some state laws require payment by a set day; an employer that pays after the holiday has to stay within them. For overtime, 29 CFR 778.106 expects payment on the regular payday for the workweek, or as soon as practicable when the amount cannot be computed in time.

The payroll calendar generator applies the rule to a whole year, and the business days calculator counts the days between any two dates on the same bank calendar.