Santander (again!) and Faster Payments system

GraceCourt

This is a warning to anyone out there who is still uninformed enough to be a Santander customer - I await the results of several complaints to the Financial Services Ombudsman before finally closing my accounts with this wholly incompetent company and migrating my mortgage elsewhere.

But they still manage to surprise me. MSE members are probably aware of the "Faster Payments" (FP) system - similar to BACS transfers, but - between participating organisations and in respect of payments up to £10,000 - guaranteed to arrive within 2 hours and (in practice) usually almost instant.

Santander's offering was always pathetic - they only provide FP for sums of up to £250 (!!) but at least it was useful for juggling money around between accounts instantly.

But I had problems with payments made on 23rd and 24th December... all were transfers of up to £250 and were to 2 accounts with First Direct (with whom, as you will have guessed from their record on here, we have never had any problems in 16 years!). In short, I was trying to top-up a First Direct account to avoid some (modest) charges, as FD offer a "pink zone" of £250 on their current accounts and I'd accidentally let mine go over on the 23rd - my fault.

Long story short, neither of the payments made on 23rd arrived, and only one of those made on 24th did... the rest went by BACS instead and therefore - because 24th to 27th weren't working days - only arrived today... a week later! Curious about why this had happened, I enquired with Santander... here is the explanation:

Unfortunately we are unable to guarantee that transfers will be done via Faster Payments, there are many factors that are involved with Faster Payments and if just one of these is unavailable then the payment is sent via BACS that can take up to 5 working days.

The method of making transactions via Faster Payments is becoming more and more popular and with the high demand of this method of payment it is leading to more transactions failing to be made via Faster Payments.

In order to make things fair for all customers we do limit one Faster Payment per day per customer. Therefore if a payment has a set date I would advise you to make the transaction a few days earlier in order to ensure no charges are incurred.

We always try to make as many transactions as possible via Faster Payments but the numbers are so high this is not always possible; also as we have recently migrated the old Alliance & Leicester accounts to the Santander system that is a lot more Faster Payments trying to be made from the same system.

BACS does not take "... up to five working days...", it always takes exactly two working days, due to the its history of exchanging magnetic tapes at a central location (sounds like the Stone Age now, doesn't it?), with the payment taking another two working days to be returned to your account if rejected by the receiving financial institution. So the rest of any delay is due to Santander's own flaky IT systems, nothing else.

Apparently, Santander is openly admitting that it can't cope with Faster Payments, even though every other bank that I'm aware of can state precisely when the payment will arrive before it is committed to by the customer. In short, not only can you only send up to £250 (not £10,000 like most other banks, if not all other banks!) with Santander, you are limited to one and only one Faster Payment, across all of your Santander accounts, per day!


Pathetic.

Wasteofspace

The limit is £300.

ironlady2022

Each bank has different limits and I have been told it's not guaranteed under the faster payments with my bank either. Santander has had great problems with migrating all their customers' accounts onto one system. Hope you didn't get charged too much!

naked

Just to bump this thread up again as it seems to be the most recent on the subject...

I've made Faster Payments online from my Santander savings account to my Halifax current account in the past and they have worked OK.

Lately they have not been working (the main reason for closing my current account with them). The last two payments of £100 each both went by BACS. The most recent was sent yesterday.

I have phoned Santander today and they have made a £100 payment by Faster Payments with no problems whatsoever. I didn't need to give them my Halifax account details, they just used those stored on my account.

I think I've heard this mentioned elsewhere - it's very unreliable online but much better if you phone them up and do it.

DrSyn

To find a banks fasterpayments limit just type in Google "faster payments limit".
It is the one from UK payments.org

xyz123

thanks for sharing this, i certainly didnt know they limit FP to 1 payment per day... but i am not at all surprised by Santander's approach. they are a completely incompetant bank. dont have a clue what are they doing themselves.

Milarky

xyz123 wrote: »

thanks for sharing this, I certainly didn't know they limit FP to 1 payment per day... but I am not at all surprised by Santander's approach. they are a completely incompetent bank. don't have a clue what are they doing themselves.

It's not limited to one payment. The limits are/were £300 per day - which can be split down to several payments - which will all go as Faster Payments until the cumulative daily limit is passed. This also how Nationwide works (in their case it's £1000 per day). RBS is £10,000 per day and Lloyds are £25,000 per day.

Daily Limits vs Payment amounts
The situation is not helped as 'APACS' only lists the individual payment limits - and makes no mention of cumulative limits (something which is not part of the FPS 'scheme rules' and has been concocted by the banks themselves)

blueberrypie

Milarky wrote: »

It's not limited to one payment. The limits are/were £300 per day - which can be split down to several payments - which will all go as Faster Payments until the cumulative daily limit is passed.

They *might* go as Faster Payments...or they might not. Santander's FP implementation is very unreliable.

zppp

santanderftw wrote: »

why not just shut up and close your account, so i dont have to deal wih your moaning

Biography
i work for santander

I wonder if your employer would approve of your suggestion?

Stalkdog

santanderftw wrote: »

why not just shut up and close your account, so i dont have to deal wih your moaning

A little demonstration of the Santander approach to Customer Service and complaint handling....

GraceCourt

Milarky wrote: »

It's not limited to one payment. The limits are/were £300 per day

I can't say "You are wrong" because I don't know in what capacity you learned that... but I was told this in a written response by their Customer Services staff in answer to my specific question via their "secure message" system. And they most definitely didn't say that the limit was £300.

If you can explain further, and quote the provenance of your information, I will challenge the reply that I received and await further comment.

It's still horrendously flaky and I just can't afford to play "Santander electronic payment roulette" - it's quite unacceptable when other banks can be 99+% reliable with their Faster Payments...