Nationwide transfers disappearing!

MercilessKiller

Hi All

Looks like Nationwide is having a major issue. Just tried transferring £4k to an account I transfer to once a month.

Usually it processes via faster payment and completes instantly. This time, after the faster payment screen, it told me the payment was "in progress" which was odd.

Nationwide have now taken the £4k out of my account, but it is not in my other account yet. Equally, the faster payment processing status page is saying that no transfers/payments have been made in the past 24 hours.

So basically, my money has disappeared! With faster payment this certainly shouldn't happen so freaking out a bit - Just beware if you're transferring with Nationwide this morning. Would recommend doing so via phone.

Cheers

Archi_Bald

No need to freak out. If you have sent the money to an existent payee that previously received money ok, there is nothing to worry about.

There could be a problem at your receiving bank, meaning the credit will be delayed. Banks have a legal obligation to get the payment to the recipient by the end of the next business day, and there is obviously 2 parties involved - the sending and the receiving one. The sending party wouldn't necessarily know anything about the receiving party having any processing delays.

MercilessKiller

Archi_Bald wrote: »

No need to freak out. If you have sent the money to an existent payee that previously received money ok, there is nothing to worry about.

There could be a problem at your receiving bank, meaning the credit will be delayed. Banks have a legal obligation to get the payment to the recipient by the end of the next business day, and there is obviously 2 parties involved - the sending and the receiving one. The sending party wouldn't necessarily know anything about the receiving party having any processing delays.

Thanks! Looking on twitter it appears some other Nationwide customers are having this issue actually. A barclays user also complained, so may be a problem with the external protocol for processing transactions.

It's pretty bad that the money is gone from the account, but yet there's no record of any outgoing payment in the process of being sent from Nationwides point of view though!

aliasojo

http://www.nationwide.co.uk/support/ways-to-bank/service-availability

This happened a few weeks back too. It was the following day before my transfer showed up.

mgdavid

MercilessKiller wrote: »

.......
It's pretty bad that the money is gone from the account, but yet there's no record of any outgoing payment in the process of being sent from Nationwides point of view though!

It is entirely logical that step 1 of the process is done before step 2.
If the system issue affects step 2 then what you are seeing is correct.

MercilessKiller

mgdavid wrote: »

It is entirely logical that step 1 of the process is done before step 2.
If the system issue affects step 2 then what you are seeing is correct.

Not really - Money has gone from my account but there's no record of an outbound payment.

If there's a problem with step 2, it should still say somewhere that it is in a queue awaiting to be processed.... It's not that hard to do...

polymaff

MercilessKiller wrote: »

Not really - Money has gone from my account but there's no record of an outbound payment.

If there's a problem with step 2, it should still say somewhere that it is in a queue awaiting to be processed.... It's not that hard to do...

It hadn't really gone - other than into a queue of funds reserved for FPS processing. AIUI if that processing is going to last through midnight the funds have to be put back into your account then extracted again - so you don't lose interest.

I think Nationwide has shortcomings, but their FPS status notification process - giving you feedback in both text and RAG format - is one of the better ones, IMHO.

Milarky

This issue of the 'fate' of payments could be improved by the banks. For instance Lloyds is (AFAIAA) the only bank to hold a payment pending checks by a human but not take the amount from the customer's account Instead the customer gets the chance (later) to review and approve payment or to cancel it altogether. Yes, it's a bit different when the bank is 'happy' to send your payment but just can't determine the 'fate' after it leaves their safekeeping and most people will accept that is beyond their control. But not indicating the fate of the transfer while the funds may/may not still be with the sending bank is a definite 'grey' area.

Still from what I can glean Faster Payments isn't matched anywhere else in the world, where they are still working with BACs type schemes and instant transfers aren't there yet. So not perfect but we are still spoilt by comparison.

Archi_Bald

Milarky wrote: »

Still from what I can glean Faster Payments isn't matched anywhere else in the world, where they are still working with BACs type schemes and instant transfers aren't there yet. So not perfect but we are still spoilt by comparison.

You have fallen for some Marketing spiel by the FP people there. The truth is that the UK were very late to the game, as "faster payment" was the norm in at least some countries well before the UK FP system was even developed.

Remember that it is an EU law that payments must arrive with the recipient by the end of the next business day at the latest, and 28 countries comply with this (and most have been sending money at "FP speed" for years), as do a handful of EAA countries. I can't prove it but I strongly suspect we would not have anything like the FP system if it wasn't for that law.

There are of course still countries in this world that do not have anything like the UK FP system but to say its speed is unique in the world is not correct.

Consumerist

You usually get a web confirmation of any payment request; this usually includes the date and time of the request. The moral of this story is to print or save the web confirmation page of any payment request.

MARTYM8`

I had a similar issue on Friday - I tried to make a transfer to NW to pay my credit card bill from another bank. When I tried to do it online it was rejected as it said NW couldn't accept the payment at the current time - about 1pm in the afternoon.

I was simply asked to confirm if I wanted it sent later by my current bank - when they could accept it.

First time that's happened to me when making a payment from my current account.