BACS limit

pjaj

Recently both NatWest and Nation Wide have refused to perform an in-branch BACS transfer for sums over £10,000 and insisted on using CHAPS (for which they charge, of course) even though there was no great urgency, 3 working days would have done in both cases.
Why is this? Are they just trying it on, or is there some good legal reason?
The first was to pass a house deposit to the solicitor, the second to consolidate funds in one account ready for the completion.

Twister84

Natwest & RBS systems in branch are Branch Single Payment systems. These use the Faster Payment system to send payments, not BACs.

So in order for the payment to go across:
a) The payment going across must be £10,000 or less
b) The beneficiary account must be able to accept Faster Payments

There is no "legal" reason why Natwest couldn't do it, and it is not a system limitation either - the system is working as intended.

pjaj

OK thanks. Is there any other way, apart from a cheque, of transferring sums in excess of £10,000 without incurring charges like CHAPS?
This assumes that 3-4 working days would be acceptable if necessary.

jonesMUFCforever

Yes it is called a cheque.
Or do 2 transactions of say £5000 today and tomorrow.

MoneySaverLog

pjaj wrote: »

OK thanks. Is there any other way, apart from a cheque

What's wrong with a cheque? If the account does not have a cheque book then the bank should be able to give you one.

JuicyJesus

Use a cheque or do transactions of £10,000 a day via telephone or Internet until the amount you want is transferred.

Larger payments are more work for the bank and greater risk for all concerned if they go wrong or are fraudulent. Even without that, banks are entitled to charge for services they provide. Most payments are sent free of any charge.

MarkyMarkD

Most solicitors won't accept a cheque, though. And to send funds by cheque will take longer than 3 days unless the cheque is hand delivered to the recipient.

NFH

Set up a monthly standing order for the full amount and then cancel it a day or so after the first payment is sent. Standing orders go by FPS or BACS (depending on the amount), not by CHAPS.

Twister84

There is a limit on standing orders, so this wouldn't be possible - the customer also runs the risk of forgetting about the standing order. Not saying they will, but we're all human :P

You can send up to £20,000 via BACS using online banking.


In a nutshell:

If the payment is £10,000 or less, and can go via FP, it will.

If it is more than £10,000, yet lower than £20,000 , it will go via BACS, regardless of whether the receiving account is FP enabled or not.

NFH

Twister84 wrote: »

There is a limit on standing orders, so this wouldn't be possible - the customer also runs the risk of forgetting about the standing order. Not saying they will, but we're all human

Yes, the limit is £100k for standing orders via FPS. It's very unlikely with such a large amount that the customer will forget to cancel it, and after all he has a whole month to do it.

YorkshireBoy

NFH wrote: »

Yes, the limit is £100k for standing orders via FPS.

That's a 'system' limit though. It doesn't follow that all banks, and in the context of this thread, NatWest & Nationwide, have adopted it.

The article also talks of £20K FP limits (in general), but LTSB is currently £25K.