CPAs - can your bank tell you which ones you have setup?

robatwork

I realise that if I have setup a CPA (Continuous Payment Authority) with a company and they haven't yet contacted my bank, then there's no way the bank can know about it.

However they know about any CPAs I have setup in the past.

I just requested a list of them from my bank, but they won't tell me what they are, they just gave a boilerplate reply: "If you wish to cancel a CPA that has debited your account, please contact us on the number provided below and we will be happy to help you further."

So is this a case of they can't, or they won't?

BMN

robatwork wrote: »

However they know about any CPAs I have setup in the past.

And who told you this?

grumbler

MSE article: Continuous payment authority: manage recurring payments

chris_m

robatwork wrote: »

However they know about any CPAs I have setup in the past.

No, they don't know. A CPA is drawn against your debit/credit card number so will look just like any other payment made using that card. The bank isn't going to know whether repeated payments were done by means of a CPA or by you actually instigating the payments yourself each month.

I guess that when you ask the bank/credit card company to cancel a CPA, they ask for the transaction description or merchant reference, and can then apply a block on any further requests for payment using that description/reference. Without you telling them what to block they won't know.

robatwork

chris_m wrote: »

No, they don't know. A CPA is drawn against your debit/credit card number so will look just like any other payment made using that card. The bank isn't going to know whether repeated payments were done by means of a CPA or by you actually instigating the payments yourself each month.

Is that correct?

To the bank, a CPA payment is exactly the same as a normal debit/credit card payment? No marker at all?

I find it hard to believe but can a bank employee clarify that for me?

Westie983

robatwork wrote: »

Is that correct?

To the bank, a CPA payment is exactly the same as a normal debit/credit card payment? No marker at all?

I find it hard to believe but can a bank employee clarify that for me?

It shows on your statement as DEB which is the annotation for debit card transaction there is no distinguish between a payment taken via continuous payment authority or a debit card transaction on line or in a retailer.

There are departments at head office of the banks that deal with cancelation of CPA's and you no longer have to go back to the original provider to cancel the authority although it does make it easier to cancel if you do.

Many of the CPA companies are hard to pin down and cancelling with the originator can be hard (think online dating sites and payday loan companies are culprits of this) this doesn't mean you cant cancel CPA but can make things easier as there wont be a reoccurrence of payment if its been cancelled by both the bank and the originator. (**if it does get applied again after cancelation it is refunded by the bank, although as many companies take the pan number of the card and not the sort code and account number so replacing the card and thus the pan number and expiry date can reduce this from happening, still need to contact the bank till its been canceled and they have been informed)

hope this helps.

BMN

robatwork wrote: »

Is that correct?

To the bank, a CPA payment is exactly the same as a normal debit/credit card payment? No marker at all?

I find it hard to believe but can a bank employee clarify that for me?

Technically it's not correct.

Merchants are supposed to flag recurring transactions as such (though not all merchants will follow the rules).

But that doesn't mean the issuer (the bank) has access to a list of CPAs. The card associations (Visa/MasterCard/Amex) do not provide information in this way - however they do provide stop services which store cancelled CPAs in a database and allow those transactions to be auto-declined when they are presented/executed.

benjus

BMN wrote: »

Technically it's not correct.

Merchants are supposed to flag recurring transactions as such (though not all merchants will follow the rules).

But that doesn't mean the issuer (the bank) has access to a list of CPAs. The card associations (Visa/MasterCard/Amex) do not provide information in this way - however they do provide stop services which store cancelled CPAs in a database and allow those transactions to be auto-declined when they are presented/executed.

Are you saying that it's purely down to the merchant? That they simply store the card details and put a new transaction through on that card every time they want to debit money?

If that's the case then cancelling the card should be enough to stop the payments, as the payments are nothing more than a series of one-off payments and authorisation should fail the next time a debit is attempted.

As cancelling the card is not enough to stop them, there must be something at the autorisation stage that's different between CPA and a one-off payment. So does that mean that Visa/Mastercard has a list of CPAs for each card? And if so is it possible to get them to release the lists? Via a subject access request possibly?

Maybe I'm missing something - I'm no expert on these matters.

ChiefGrasscutter

No, because (as I understand it) they rely on the authorised code from the FIRST transaction to process the future payment.

grumbler

benjus wrote: »

Are you saying that it's purely down to the merchant? That they simply store the card details and put a new transaction through on that card every time they want to debit money?

I am pretty sure this is exactly what they do.

If that's the case then cancelling the card should be enough to stop the payments, as the payments are nothing more than a series of one-off payments and authorisation should fail the next time a debit is attempted.

Well, how can they process an authorised transaction then if the card is cancelled after authorisation and they have up to 6 months for processing the transaction?

As cancelling the card is not enough to stop them, there must be something at the autorisation stage that's different between CPA and a one-off payment.

This 'something' is some T&C that you accept when authorising the payment(s).

So does that mean that Visa/Mastercard has a list of CPAs for each card?

I believe they don't. CPA is between you and the company taking payments. That's why it's that difficult (impossible?) for banks to stop a CPA. I believe that after the law obliged them to do this, they had no other way of doing this than adding the company to some list of companies attached to your account and stopping/charging back payments every time this company attempts to take them.

benjus

grumbler wrote: »

Well, how can they process an authorised transaction then if the card is cancelled after authorisation and they have up to 6 months for processing the transaction?

That's a different case though - if a CPA is really just a series of one-off payments with stored card details, surely each payment would have to be authorised at the time it is taken. And if the card is cancelled between payments, the next payment's authorisation should fail unless it was pre-authorised before the card was cancelled. But I don't think that's the case as it would show up in the available balance on the card; and how would they know how many payments to pre-authorise?

Or to put it another way: if I buy a coffee every morning with my debit card, but on Thursday evening I call my bank and cancel the card, I would expect that on Friday morning the card would be refused and I wouldn't get my coffee. If a CPA is just a recurring transaction repeatedly submitted by a merchant using stored card details, why does it behave differently?