Faster Payments - Missing Reference Number

Beancounter

I sent a faster payments transaction to my savings account last night but failed to put the reference number (my savings account number) on the payment. I called Santander when i realised who said that the payment would be automatically sent back by the recipients bank account within 24 hours. I just called Virgin Money who confirmed this.

I guess I just want some reassurance from anyone whio has been daft enough to do this that the money has been returned without fuss. :eek:

agrinnall

My Virgin savings account has a sortcode and account number and that's all that's needed for the Faster Payment to work. Is yours a different type of account (perhaps an old NR one) that has a single sortcode/account for all customers then a reference number that identifies your own account (as in the roll number used by some building societies)? If so then I think both banks are right that it will end up back in your Santander account, although the timing and likely success of this will depend on how both Virgin and Santander have set up their handling of rejections.

Beancounter

Looking at everything again you are correct,the account number I entered with the sort code is my Virgin account number.

Hopefully the 3K will arrive in my Virgin account at some point today then. Hopefully!!

eskbanker

Admittedly it's a bit late now but the usual advice on here is to send a low-value test payment first to safeguard against any such issues causing a big problem (and then reusing stored details thereafter).

Beancounter

Glad to say the cash arrived into the account just now. Much relieved!

agrinnall

Beancounter wrote: »

Glad to say the cash arrived into the account just now. Much relieved!

That's good, I should have mentioned that it can be a bit slow for payments to Virgin accounts to get properly credited (you can sometimes see them early in the Uncleared Transactions tab).