Out of hours ATM deposits?

james_so

Can anyone please tell me which (if any) banks offer the option to make deposits into business accounts via their ATMs out of hours?

Lloyds said they did but don't (I opened an account with them only to find out I had been misinformed)

Nat West apparently only offer the service at branches without a deposit machine inside the branch (which seems a bit nonsensical as you can't get to the deposit machine out of hours...)

I haven't had a chance to visit any other banks yet as getting into town during opening hours is difficult, hence the need for out of hours deposits!

Opinion

Not exactly what you want to hear but I had this problem and invested in a decent safe.

paddyrg

San you not use the night safe system many banks offer - you put the cash/cheques into the sealed bag and into the safety drop, it gets processed the next day

Buzby

You were limited to banks using ATM's that would accept cheque deposits, TSB of old used Philips ATM's years ago that would allow you to enter the amount deposited which was pending verification when the machine was checked.

These days - with the banks doing all they can to wipe out cheque usage, I've not seen this for 15 years or so.

phill99

Santander take deposits via their ATM system. They only offer a postal business account and all cash deposits have to be made via the ATM. Cheques can be deposited via the ATM or posted. They provide the prepaid envelopes.

Savvy_Sue

I suspect it's worth us asking whether this is cash or cheques you want to deposit out of hours?

You may think that's a daft question, but DH has to deposit cheques via ATM with the bank he uses at work, which I think is HSBC, and he does it during working hours.

If it is mostly cheques, I'd go for posting them off ... been doing this for years and find going to the bank very odd!

paddyrg

Just so you know, there is a move to allow mobile phone depositing of cheques in the UK, it has existed in the US for around a decade. Not sure of the details, but you take a photo of the cheque and I guess it's processed electronically thereafter. In fact cheques represent about 35% of B2B transactions, so they're stubbornly not going away any time soon!

But frankly I'm surprised this is even an issue, banks have had night depositories in place since the 1800's at least, only difference is you need a fraction of a percentage more trust in your bank than you currently have considering they have all your money.

Buzby

Banks charged extra for a 'night safe' key in my case it was £10pm. A look at a number of refurbished branches revealed the removal of many of these mechanisms - so they appear to be going the way of public payphones.

motorguy

Why not lodge to your own current account overnight and then transfer the money over to your business account?

It was my accountant told me to do that to avoid the fees of paying in cash to my business account.

james_so

Thanks for all the answers here, I guess I'll be sticking with Lloyds and posting cheques. It just doesn't feel right somehow and means I have to keep going down and getting stocked up on deposit envelopes..

The irony is that I can deposit cash and cheques into the ATM out of hours for my personal account at Halifax, which I understand is a part of the same group, unfortunately they don't offer a business account.

In answer to the question of why I don't do that and just transfer the money over is that I am trying to separate the accounts for business and personal use completely.

warwicktiger

My Local HSBC has the deposit facility