MSE News: Customers being 'ripped off' by banks on Faster Payments limits

Aquamania

The limit for transferring money by Faster Payments was raised to £100,000 in 2010, yet many banks still set the limit they allow customers to send through Faster Payments at a much lower figure – at some banks this is as low as £10,000.

Once you hit your bank's Faster Payments limit, you'll be asked if you want to transfer your cash via what is known as a CHAPS (Clearing House Automated Payment System) payment. You will be charged for this transfer, with the fee varying between banks, but typically being between £20 and £30.

I have accounts with both Lloyds and HSBC.

In recent times (last 24 months) I found the limits with Lloyds was £25k per day and with HSBC £10k per day

I have needed to move in excess of these amounts, and so just split it over the minimum number of days necessary to shift the amount I required to move.

I was never once contracted by either bank. Nor did I feel I was ripped off, as I was not charged for any transfer.

Aquamania

MSE_Helen wrote: »

Thanks for your comments. We have tweaked the copy to make it clearer that faster payments don't automatically turn into CHAPS payments - this was never how we meant that sentence to be read. .

I think you should consider 'tweaking' the article again, as my previous post quotes exactly what the article currently states.

System

I did recently and ended up using a combination of FPs and cheques. The amount was too low to justify £25 a pop.

I did ask for cash but the bank had no £100 notes and I didn't fancy looking like a crack dealer depositing bundles of £20s.

I don't see why the offending banks can't require extra security measures over say 10k to the 100k scheme limit. Most of the security issues with Faster Payments are due to the human naivety or stupidity.

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

I have to ask too how many of us on here need to transfer large £10k+ sums on a regular basis using any method let alone FP?


I can see the sense in having a lower limit - if your account was hacked and monies transferred out there would be plenty of posts on here about the bad old banks letting someone transfer funds out of their accounts fraudulently.

pinkdalek

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

I have to ask too how many of us on here need to transfer large £10k+ sums on a regular basis using any method let alone FP?


I can see the sense in having a lower limit - if your account was hacked and monies transferred out there would be plenty of posts on here about the bad old banks letting someone transfer funds out of their accounts fraudulently.

I agree with you, however truth is in this world with banks is you cannot win. If the banks did adopt a non limit policy we would have headlines in the Daily Mail along the lines of......

BANK ALLOWED FRAUD TO BE TRANSFERRED WITHOUT ANY LIMIT OR CHECKS. :mad:

malc_b

FYI

The FP guaranteed timescales are by next working day. Big banks who are directly wired into FP can do in sub 1s. Small banks and building societies need to use a big bank which they might do in bulk once a day, hence the 1 working day maximum time.

However, although big banks can do FP in sub 1s my experience is that large transfers frequently get caught by "security" especially if they are the first large transfer to that account. Get the account unblocked to complete the transfer is impossible as the banks fall back on "FP can take up to 1 day" (implying that it isn't the bank's fault and the blame lies with FP which in fact doesn't block or delay any payments). Hence you can never rely on FP being the same day.

For guaranteed same day the fact of life is you need to use CHAPS. If you want to use FP then allow for a 1 day delay as at least then you can fall back to CHAPS if need be. After 1 working day the FP should have either been completed or the money returned to your account. In my experience banks can take money from you account and not deliver it to the receiving account until the next day, despite being wired into FP so there being no FP reason for the delay. The FP rules allow up to next working day so large banks are complying with the letter of the rules.

sd0

I asked Santander about the limit on transferring money via FP and this was part of the reply.

"At Santander we are very serious about protecting our customers from the potential risk of fraud and have certain policies and procedures in place to help reduce any risk to our customers.
To help us reduce this risk a daily transfer limit is randomly selected each day which may mean that on occasion you cannot transfer the full amount requested in one go."

OK... except they will not disclose the lower limit on their random range so you can have no real idea as to how much you can transfer until you attempt to do so.

The upper limit may well be 100,000 but you will not know what your daily limit is.

Goldiegirl

Well, no, you won't know what their daily limit is.

If they published it, a fraudster would just transfer less than the daily limit.

So it wouldn't be worth having a limit to protect against fraud in the first place

continuity

I'm also with Santander and need to transfer £55k for a house deposit so I was a bit surprised to find out that exceeded their online limit. Unfortunately the MSE article comes up as Google's definitive answer, despite not being correct or authoritative.

The Faster Payments site has a definitive list for a couple dozen banks across online, phone and in-branch. I'd link to it but unfortunately I'm too new to post links....

http://www.fasterpayments.org.uk/about-us/transaction-limits

eskbanker

continuity wrote: »

Unfortunately the MSE article comes up as Google's definitive answer, despite not being correct or authoritative.

In what sense would you consider anything Google (or MSE) presents as 'definitive' or 'authoritative' when looking for the terms and conditions of commercial organisations? One is a search engine providing links to all sorts of information that anyone can post, while the other readily accepts its status as

a journalistic website and aim to provide the best MoneySaving guides, tips, tools and techniques, but can't guarantee to be perfect, so do note you use the information at your own risk and we can't accept liability if things go wrong.

• This info does not constitute financial advice, always do your own research

P.S. This thread and the article that it's about are from November 2014, making it even less likely to be an accurate source of up to date information!

agrinnall

continuity wrote: »

Unfortunately the MSE article comes up as Google's definitive answer, despite not being correct or authoritative.

There is no such thing as "Google's definitive answer", if you think there is then I suspect that you have made many wrong decisions in the past due to incorrect assumptions. It is your duty to evaluate the results that a search returns and not simply take the first one in the list as gospel.