Which bank account for immediate transaction visibility

blued

I have an account with Halifax and a separate Santander account that I use for bills. When I use my card to make a transaction with Halifax (contactless or PIN) I can log into the app and see the transaction instantly about 90% of the time. If it isn't instant it is always the same day. Santander however have no feature like this and it can be 3+ days before I have any indication that something is outstanding.

Does anyone know of another bank that shows transactions as they happen in a pending list?

Herbalus

TSB have a pending transaction section on the app. lloyds and NatWest tell you an available balance which includes pending transactions (balance minus pending transactions), though it doesn!!!8217;t actually tell you what they are.

You should be aware though that banks can only tell you about a transaction when the retailer tells the bank about it. This can be a few days.

blued

Thanks, I'll check out TSB to see what they have on offer.

I think in most cases the retailer must at least send an authorisation and this is what Halifax displays? For instance when I filled up at Tesco pay at the pump the transaction displayed as £1.

colsten

Banks can only show you what has been reported by retailers. Not all retailers report all purchases immediately, not least because they may not all be connected to a network 24 x 7, but also because they may have decided to batch up transactions and report them once every hour / every 2, 4, 6 hours, every day etc etc.

If you want to know how much money you have left to spend, you need to keep a record of your spending yourself because you are the only person who could possibly know what you have spent, and what you have committed to spend (e.g. direct debits etc).

18cc

starlng bank shows card transactions instantly almost before you put your card away even abroad. Smartphone only.

blued

I appreciate what you're saying about the retailers but my query is about banks that report the transaction when they receive it (assuming the retailer has reported it) immediately.

An example from yesterday, I paid for 2 items in Tesco, one on the Santander account and one on my Halifax account, one after the other. The Halifax account displayed it as pending yesterday and there is still nothing visible on Santander today. This tells me not all banks are equal regardless of what the retailers are doing.

eskbanker

blued wrote: »

An example from yesterday, I paid for 2 items in Tesco, one on the Santander account and one on my Halifax account, one after the other. The Halifax account displayed it as pending yesterday and there is still nothing visible on Santander today. This tells me not all banks are equal regardless of what the retailers are doing.

This tells me that your Halifax card is an online one (i.e. the transaction would have been authorised by Halifax in real time and therefore known to them) and that your Santander card is an offline one (capable of paying for low-value transactions without online authorisation from the bank).

In other words it's an issue relating to the type of debit card you have rather than the bank itself....

SnowTiger

blued wrote: »

An example from yesterday, I paid for 2 items in Tesco, one on the Santander account and one on my Halifax account, one after the other. The Halifax account displayed it as pending yesterday and there is still nothing visible on Santander today. This tells me not all banks are equal regardless of what the retailers are doing.

eskbanker wrote: »

This tells me that your Halifax card is an online one (i.e. the transaction would have been authorised by Halifax in real time and therefore known to them) and that your Santander card is an offline one (capable of paying for low-value transactions without online authorisation from the bank).

In other words it's an issue relating to the type of debit card you have rather than the bank itself....

Maybe.

On the other hand, Santander doesn't show pending transactions whereas Halifax does. However, if the transaction was online OP should have noticed their available balance reduced.

In my experience, most transactions are online now. Even small credit card transactions appear as pending immediately.

There has been some effort by the card networks to move transactions online where possible:

Card schemes are taking action to deal with a security flaw which means lost or stolen contactless cards can be used AFTER they've been cancelled – but some of the changes will take months to come in and cards will continue to be usable in some cases.

Following a long-running MoneySavingExpert.com campaign, Visa, Mastercard and American Express are changing the way they handle the majority of payments to ensure they are processed online, so that a retailer will instantly know if a card has been cancelled.

Last month the Financial Conduct Authority chairman John Griffith-Jones admitted to the Treasury Select Committee that the problem was still not fully fixed - 18 months after we began campaigning on the issue.

Visa says it's already tackled the issue for most transactions and Mastercard has pledged to by March, but American Express says it could take up to 18 months to complete the changes.

maxximus75

Starling Bank are great. As soon as I make a payment using my card an alert pops up on my phone with the details of the transaction and this also shows on my online account immediately.

datlex

Not sure about banks as most of my spending is either cash or credit card (for rewards and paid IN FULL). My credit card shows pending payments.

MDMD

datlex wrote: »

Not sure about banks as most of my spending is either cash or credit card (for rewards and paid IN FULL). My credit card shows pending payments.

Which credit card is this?

From my experience the closest the mainstream banks get is Barclaycard through the Barclays app which updates the balance straightaway with anything shown in pending, although not the transaction list.

For an immediate update to transactions Monzo does this, similar to Starling.