Banks incapable of managing changoever to faster payments?

Ted_Bloke

Ted_Bloke wrote: »

Seen that. http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=49170819&postcount=1
You have received exactly the same message as I have.

My enquiry to the credit card co. elicited this answer:

"In light of this Nationwide will be moving over to Faster payments on their Credit Cards to accept payments from other banks and building societies using the Faster Payments scheme from 9th December 2011.

... However, HSBC are implementing the facility of Faster Payments on 3rd December 2011 which is earlier than Nationwide’s implementation date."

Now it is 9th December and I tried again.

Result: "Sorry - it is not possible for us to make a bill payment to the given beneficiary"

Maybe in the afternoon of 9 December? Maybe at 23.59 09/12?

I will try yet again tomorrow.

Teething problems? I am posting about nothing, no one will be caused loss by missed payments or duplicated or multiple payments? Want to bet?

Chris2000

This may not be a teething problem, but it is a temporary problem caused by some banks still not accepting Faster Payments despite being allowed several years to prepare for the changeover.

Result: Some banks appear to be switching off the facility to pay by BACS to meet the 1 Jan deadline before other banks have enabled the facility to receive Faster Payments.

Even when the recipient enables inbound FP, it could take a while for other banks to recognise this. According to the sort code checker, Cahoot now accept FP on 09-06-40 but Lloyds don't recognise this. At least Lloyds haven't turned BACS off yet, but they give a big warning that the recipient doesn't accept FP and asking for my agreement to use a slower method. From 1 Jan they will not be allowed to do that.

izools

I'll just carry on paying all my bills by Direct Debit then. Simples

EDIT: Although here's a worrying thought - what about December payroll? How many people are going to miss out on their december paycheque because there are compatbility issues between their employer's bank and their own bank?

THIS is a genuine concern and an issue likely to cause many problems with the most important paycheque of the year. Hmm...

Chris2000

December payrolls will have to go via BACS or some payments will fail.

The industry should have sorted all this out before now. They should have voluntarily agreed an earlier deadline for incoming FP to be enabled on all accounts, with a subsequent window during which banks could start switching off BACS payments if they didn't want to leave it until the last minute, over a holiday weekend (which is understandable). They have known about the 1 Jan 2012 deadline for long enough.

agrinnall

izools wrote: »

I'll just carry on paying all my bills by Direct Debit then. Simples

EDIT: Although here's a worrying thought - what about December payroll? How many people are going to miss out on their december paycheque because there are compatbility issues between their employer's bank and their own bank?

THIS is a genuine concern and an issue likely to cause many problems with the most important paycheque of the year. Hmm...

I hope payroll will be less of an issue as most organisations use the BACS Direct Credit system for payroll payments, and my understanding is that this will continue unchanged after Jan 1st.

To those people complaining about the length of time it's taken to get to this stage of Faster Payements, yes, it's taken a long time, probably too long, but would you prefer to have it implemented quickly or right? It's a very complex system and the consequences of getting it wrong are pretty horrendous. So far there have only been relatively minor glitches, taking a bit longer to make sure it works correctly is the sensible course of action.

izools

Absolutely I understand but some banks have stopped making / accepting BACS payments in the lead up to the deadline. This is what causes the problems Ted is alluding to.

agrinnall

You're right that there seems to have been a complete lack of co-ordination on doing this between the banks. I don't work in banking any more so I'm not sure what's happened, when FP was first implemented there was a huge amount of work to ensure everyone who was taking part was ready at the same time but for some reason that hasn't happened this time.

Ted_Bloke

OK sorted for me at least. As mentioned I tried again on Friday when it was supposed to be ready and it didn't work. I didn't have time during the weekend, and in the nature of things I suspect it would have been wasted (I don't know offhand whether transfers are now supposed to happen on non-working days anyway). I went back on Monday and at last it worked.

Not exactly what you'd call a flying start though.

And am I right or am I right that it was originally supposed to happen a couple of years ago? And that that was after a promise to do it earlier had already been postponed.

There have been protests about the whole thing for years, I have discussed it on other forums like mse Discussion Time. I have been told it was all very complicated. Even when I explained how to do it :cheesy: - you subtract an amount from a column representing someone's balance in one bank and you add the same amount to another column in another bank. I was told that was very difficult to do in less than three days but hopefully the high-powered computer people have now invented a way.

shiny76

My wife got a similar letter yesterday regarding paying from her HSBC account to Nationwide CC. HSBC said the sortcode & account number wouldn't accept FP so they couldn't send it.

Fortunately she has another Nationwide current account that does take FP, so I've transferred money to that account so she can then move money within Nationwide from her current account to her CC.

As for a more general solution whilst the banks/CC companies sort themselves out. Don't you have the option to make an online payment via Debit Card? You could try that option.

andrew-the-cat

I have to admit I have run into this problem, I tried to pay some money to my mother from my Lloyds account (I thinks she's Halifax) a few days ago. I have paid loads of times in the past and it normally always used faster payments so she would receive it literally immediately. However this time it did not use FP, and went by BACS instead for some odd reason. It didn't fail though which is a good thing, it just took the normal 3 working days or whatever to clear.