Is bank transfer safe?

chrisw

Hi,
I'm going to buy a car privately for around £4k. I'm not bothered about picking it up for a few days, what's the best way of paying for it?

The easiest for me would be to get the sellers bank details and do a bank transfer but then the seller would have my money and the car.

I could pay by cheque and wait for it to clear but again they have my money and car.

Bank drafts also seem susceptible to being faked.

I could get cash out but it seems to be difficult to get (from HSBC) and there seems to be concerns around fake notes.

If the car is registered at the sellers address would bank transfer be safe?

Buying privately is more stressful than I thought.

Money_maker

No bank transfer until you have the car. No one can tell you its safe to send money in a transaction that cannot be cancelled to a stranger when you dont have the goods.

King_Nothing

Only £4k, I'd pay cash if the seller will accept that.

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

You can do a bank transfer while you wait these days. The 2 hours is a theoretical delay to allow for glitches but I would see the car, do the transfer and then fill in the documents while the other person checks their balance.

House_Martin

I bought my last car , 6k , with my debit card. No probs and straightforward.I would have thought all big garages can process debit/credit cards

Iceweasel

Most bank transfers go through in a matter of minutes and it's not a hassle at all - very easy.

tykesi

I sold a car last year, the guy came to see it, test drove then made the bank transfer while we sorted the paperwork. In the time it took to fill the V5 in the money was in my account.

agrinnall

Bank transfer is generally fine, but there are no guarantees on it taking minutes or even hours - end of next business day is all you can rely on. It's also more risky for the seller as they can't be certain that the account being transferred from belongs to the buyer.

I would find out who the seller banks with, and if you are lucky they'll be with the same bank as you and you can go into a branch and do an instant transfer between accounts over the counter, I did this as long ago as 2000 when selling a car.

Marvel1

Bank transfer on day of pick up at their house (I did the same for my current car).

I wasn't going to carry £5k on 2 trains and a taxi.

DoaM

Do a test transfer first (e.g. £10) to make sure the seller's bank details are correct and to give an idea on how long it takes.

Then do the transfer of the balance and collect the car. Perhaps you take the keys and V5C and he keeps the car until the transfer completes?

weejangus

As others have mentioned, bank transfer is fine. It's also worth popping the vehicle registration into the transaction reference so that if anything goes wrong, you can demonstrate that the payment was for that specific car.

Faster Payments are usually instant. The 2 hour rule is only there to accommodate when a bank puts their Faster Payment system offline. The regulator will only allow them to do this for a maximum of 1 hour 59 minutes (during which time all Faster Payments are held and processed as soon as it is brought back online). So the max time it can take is 2 hours. This usually only happens through the night though.

Also a good idea (as mentioned) to test that the Faster Payment will go through - there are some banks that have yet to subscribe to the faster payments scheme. I would usually test £1 and make sure the seller can see it in their account. If that works, transfer the rest.

If something does go wrong and the seller ends up with your cash AND the car (and is not willing to give you either), you can still approach your bank and ask them to recover the funds. It's a little known process called CPR (credit payment recovery). Your bank can request that the funds are frozen in the recipients account. They will be returned to you as long as the recipient is unable to prove to the banks satisfaction that they were entitled to receive the funds - this is where having the cars reg number as the transaction ref will come in handy.

Hope that helps.

J