Faster Payment Error

Plxply

Hello,

I sent a small transfer of £11.20 from my Lloyds TSB account to my HSBC account, the transaction failed according to Lloyds and however the money seemed to have left my account. I checked back about 6 hours later and found that the £11.20 was both in my Lloyds account and my HSBC account.

Obviously one of the £11.20's wasn't my money and as such on the 17th Lloyds took the money from my account. My question is to not whether they can do that, but how did it happen? Surely a Faster Payment is guaranteed and it took them 5 days to notice the error, could anyone explain the technical side of how this happened?

I've had problems with Lloyds TSB for a while and I'm thinking of moving away from them, mainly because it makes me concerned that instead of doubling crediting my accounts they may instead mess up a £2,000 transfer and I will be stuck fighting them to get the money back.

Thanks,

Plxply

No, I'm asking why it could happen, if you read my post rather than throwing accusations you will see that I'm querying why it happened as in "why was my HSBC account credited but my Lloyds account not debited". Surely the money has to come from somewhere and I always assumed it was a straight transfer where Lloyds transferred the money to HSBC and told them which account it should go to, money can't come from nowhere after all.

gt94sss2

I've experienced this a few times in the past.

Lloyds internet banking has reported that a faster payment attempt 'failed' (and showed no transaction had occurred).

After about 24 hours, Lloyds updated its systems/online statement to show that the payment had actually gone through as FPS. A real pain given - at least the first time it occured - that I tried to do it several times in a row and later found they had actually all gone through..

Regards
Sunil

Azrael_1701

Lloyds will have informed HSBC of the credit, and clearly a system error has taken place that only half of the payment has been completed, and it has not been debited properly. They have then realised their error later and rectfied it.
Also, faster payments are NOT guaranteed, they can still revert to a slower payment.
Furthermore, the actual 'money' doesnt 'move' instantly at all, it can take a few days for the funds to be offset between banks at the bank of england, and is sometimes only done once a week.

For example; this week lloyds might have sent £2000000 to HSBC, and HSBC might havs sent £1000000 to lloyds. In that case, at the end of the week, lloyds will move the difference in funds at the bank of england.

Plxply

gt94sss2 wrote: »

I've experienced this a few times in the past.

Lloyds internet banking has reported that a faster payment attempt 'failed' (and showed no transaction had occurred).

After about 24 hours, Lloyds updated its systems/online statement to show that the payment had actually gone through as FPS. A real pain given - at least the first time it occured - that I tried to do it several times in a row and later found they had actually all gone through..

Thanks for that, I'm glad I'm not the only one who experiences problems with Lloyds online banking, since that's the main thing I use it's the main reason I think that I should change accounts.

Azrael_1701 wrote: »

Lloyds will have informed HSBC of the credit, and clearly a system error has taken place that only half of the payment has been completed, and it has not been debited properly. They have then realised their error later and rectfied it.
Also, faster payments are NOT guaranteed, they can still revert to a slower payment.
Furthermore, the actual 'money' doesnt 'move' instantly at all, it can take a few days for the funds to be offset between banks at the bank of england, and is sometimes only done once a week.

For example; this week lloyds might have sent £2000000 to HSBC, and HSBC might havs sent £1000000 to lloyds. In that case, at the end of the week, lloyds will move the difference in funds at the bank of england.

Thanks for that, a detailed explanation and no accusations of fraud.

Azrael_1701

Plxply wrote: »

Thanks for that, a detailed explanation and no accusations of fraud.

You are most welcome.

ChiefGrasscutter

Sorry to hear you have had general problems....

I'm use Lloyds among others and to be honest I've found their faster payments and prior to that their BACS system very good - their max limits in £ to transfer via FP are one of the highest for personal customers.
I have had only one faster payment bocked by the system for an extra ID check as it was outside my normal routine - fair enough. It was held until they phoned me to go through an ID check on the phone and then once they released it they gave me instructions how to re-authorise it through a special new screen which appreared on my payments section.

As others have said FP still has its teething problems and sometimes reverts to BACS.

pqrdef

With an immediate FP, if it fails, it fails. If the bank tells you it failed, it's then down to you to try again or make the payment by other means.

So if the transaction might not have completely failed, the sending bank must abort it, cancel it, wipe it off the face of the earth. Not complete it, or you will have paid twice.

Personally I've just discovered that an immediate FP can be reported successful and not actually succeed.

Something else our wonderful payments industry has managed to screw up.

I can see I'm going to develop the habit of avoiding immediate FPs in favour of scheduling payments to go overnight whenever possible.

Degenerate

If it reaches the recieving account it has succeeded. The problem in this case appears to be that Lloyd's systems failed to get the message that it succeeded and therefore displayed an error message and didn't debit the sending account until they reconciled things a few days later.

pqrdef

Degenerate wrote: »

If it reaches the recieving account it has succeeded.

Which is no use at all, since you've generally no way of knowing. What use is a payment system which may or may not work, and you don't know whether it worked or not?

agrinnall

pqrdef wrote: »

Which is no use at all, since you've generally no way of knowing. What use is a payment system which may or may not work, and you don't know whether it worked or not?

But that's not the case with the OP is it, because at the sending end Lloyds reported it at the time as a failure. While there was then a confusing position for several days the fact that it was shown as a failure in the first place should be a warning that something might have gone wrong. If there's no warning then I think it's pretty safe to assume it's worked OK.