Santander Faster Payments

jakesuk

For my sins I have a Santander account.

I only keep it because it's an old A&L premier which comes with free travel insurance.

It drives me crazy that the faster payment system seems to be so hit and miss ONLY with Santander. Even payments of £300 or lower sometimes go through and sometimes don't. Last week I made a £300 pound payment on Day 1 to Payee A. Went through as a FP. Next day I did same payment to Payee A and it took 3 working days.

Can anyone help by either explaining to me if there is any way of getting the best chance of a FP going through?? Is there any method to it?

Otherwise does anyone know a good bank account with free travel insurance??

Baldur

Nationwide do this on their Flex account with debit card (minimum £750 credited per month) - http://www.nationwide.co.uk/current_account/account_benefits.htm

Their Faster Payments limits can be found here - http://www.nationwide.co.uk/faster_payments/faq.htm

anselld

Just keep the Santander for free travel insurance and do everything else at a real bank of your choice.

Santander FP work better with Standing Orders than manual FP so you could just arrange the monthly funding requirement £500? via FP Standing Order.

motoko

I've just opened up a santander account, for the £100 switching bonus, 5% interest and 6% regular saver. I'm not planning on using the account much, but I'd still like to be able to use faster payments to transfer the £1000 per month in and out and for any other ad hoc transfers.

I noticed on their website it says that one-off faster payments have a limit of £300 and can only be done over the phone rather than online. However, standing orders of up to £5000 are sent as faster payments, with the exception of the first payment on a new standing order.

Does this mean I can set up a standing order of say 1p to go each week/month from santander to my regular current account, then amend the amount/date whenever I actually want to make a transfer, in order to get it paid by faster payment? Or will the fact I've amended the standing order mean that it gets treated as the first payment of a new SO, and sent by BACS?

Has anyone tried this? If not I'll be testing this out and will report my findings.

rb10

motoko wrote: »

I've just opened up a santander account, for the £100 switching bonus, 5% interest and 6% regular saver. I'm not planning on using the account much, but I'd still like to be able to use faster payments to transfer the £1000 per month in and out and for any other ad hoc transfers.

I noticed on their website it says that one-off faster payments have a limit of £300 and can only be done over the phone rather than online. However, standing orders of up to £5000 are sent as faster payments, with the exception of the first payment on a new standing order.

Does this mean I can set up a standing order of say 1p to go each week/month from santander to my regular current account, then amend the amount/date whenever I actually want to make a transfer, in order to get it paid by faster payment? Or will the fact I've amended the standing order mean that it gets treated as the first payment of a new SO, and sent by BACS?

Has anyone tried this? If not I'll be testing this out and will report my findings.

With the new online banking, you can do one-off faster payments ... although I assume these are still limited to £300 per day.

I do like your logic though! If it works, then you may not even need the regular 1p ... just set it up to be for 1p to go out annually and then just bring forward the next date and change the amount each time you want to make a payment.

adindas

I could also see this is a good things to try and see. If it is successful then This RS FP which allow up to £5000 could be used to replace normal FP which is currently quite annoying ?
Have someone tried it and confirm that it works ....

rb10 wrote: »

I do like your logic though! If it works, then you may not even need the regular 1p ... just set it up to be for 1p to go out annually and then just bring forward the next date and change the amount each time you want to make a payment.

anamenottaken

I would be interested to know what happens.

I suspect the SO FP will go out at the end of the specified day and that the SO may not be able to be changed to go out on the same day as the change is made.

YorkshireBoy

rb10 wrote: »

If it works, then you may not even need the regular 1p ... just set it up to be for 1p to go out annually and then just bring forward the next date and change the amount each time you want to make a payment.

I cycle £1K per month through my A&L Premier Direct account (to maintain a £10K overdraft stooz) and obviously want to get it back to the savings account ASAP.

If, like me, motoko wants to transfer out the next day following deposit, when would he need to make the SO change? If he made it the day before (ie once he'd checked the deposit had landed) would there be time for the change to take effect?

If not, then he'd be making the change before the money had arrived, which wouldn't be a problem for motoko (because presumably his account has £2.5K sat in it making 5% so the outbound payment is covered), but for me it could be a disaster as I'd go to into unauthorised overdraft if my incoming FP was delayed for whatever reason!

So I too look forward to hearing how it goes.

adindas

We could do like this. Always set up your 1p SO at the end of the month so you will be able to adjust it to earlier date. If you want to do large amount FP, say May 17, then change the SO date on May 16 or (or probably May 17 could still work). After the money go out then change it again to 1p and then at the end the date at the end of the month.

anamenottaken wrote: »

I would be interested to know what happens.

I suspect the SO FP will go out at the end of the specified day and that the SO may not be able to be changed to go out on the same day as the change is made.

Milarky

motoko wrote: »

I noticed standing orders of up to £5000 are sent as faster payments, with the exception of the first payment on a new standing order.

Does this mean I can set up a standing order of say 1p to go each week/month from santander to my regular current account, then amend the amount/date whenever I actually want to make a transfer, in order to get it paid by faster payment? Or will the fact I've amended the standing order mean that it gets treated as the first payment of a new SO, and sent by BACS?

I'd have thought you don't need to do this if you are keeping a balance £2500 - as YB says. The thing to do is have a standing order coming from another bank (say Lloyds) set to same date and allow them to cross without further tweaking on your part. Remember standing orders are strictly bank working days only - so a '1st UFN' instruction (or whatever) will be modified in tandem by the two organisations.

Which bank are you sending to Santander from?

motoko

I've set up an SO of £5 into my natwest account for the 20th, once this has gone thru I'll try amending it for a different amount & date, and let you guys know whether the second payment goes by FP or not.

rb10 wrote: »

With the new online banking, you can do one-off faster payments ... although I assume these are still limited to £300 per day.

The one-off FPs are only possible over the phone not online (unless you have an old A&L account), and yes they are limited to £300. In my opinion this is only worth the effort / cost of the phone call if you need the money really urgently, e.g. to avoid a bank charge rather than to save a couple of days interest.

anamenottaken wrote: »

I suspect the SO FP will go out at the end of the specified day and that the SO may not be able to be changed to go out on the same day as the change is made.

I'm pretty sure you are right, most banks require one clear working day's notice to set-up / amend / cancel an SO, i.e. you have to tell them two working days before the SO is due. According to their website, Santander seem to require an additional day, for some unknown reason. Therefore you would need to amend the SO three days before you wanted the money to arrive in the other account, the same as if you were sending the money by BACS, the only difference is that you don't lose any interest on the money. If you need to get at the money unexpectedly and urgently, this method wouldn't help.

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

I cycle £1K per month through my A&L Premier Direct account (to maintain a £10K overdraft stooz) and obviously want to get it back to the savings account ASAP.

Just out of interest, what do you do currently? If you have enough other current / instant access savings accounts which accept FPs, then I guess you can do 4x£250 FPs from the A&L account.

Milarky wrote: »

I'd have thought you don't need to do this if you are keeping a balance £2500 - as YB says. The thing to do is have a standing order coming from another bank (say Lloyds) set to same date and allow them to cross without further tweaking on your part.

Yes, my situation is different from YB's, in that I intend to have £2500 (or as close as I can manage) sitting in the account most of the time. So I want to transfer out of Santander through my other accounts and back into Santander each month. For the regular monthly payments, the SO from santander should be fine as long as it doesn't need to be changed. When the money arrives at its destination (Natwest / Halifax) it can be FPed on from there, I prefer to do this manually rather than set up an SO, just in case there is a screw up at Santander.

However there are a couple of problems with this:
1. The first payment won't go by FP. OK, its only one payment, so I'm sure I can handle it, but if it was a £1 payment rather than a £1000 payment, it would make me happier.
2. There are bound to be occasions when I want to change the date and/or amount of the SO (e.g. I don't have £1000 and need to make several smaller payments instead) and I don't currently know whether this would count as the first payment of a new SO and go by BACS.
3. There are also going to be times when I want to make additional ad-hoc transfers. I'd like these to go through the same day to avoid loss of interest, without me having to phone up and arrange multiple FPs to various accounts and/or go to the bank and transfer the money manually.