Pingit and debit card payments

pbrichard

Any help appreciated!

I'd like to try and understand how debit card payments work from the receiver's point of view, since I am the receiver.

I run a very small business, and send a link to clients to pay me with a debit card. The link looks like this pingit.me/sherlockholmes (not my real name)

Clients can use their debit card to pay an amount I specify.

Payments have been received fine (within hours) until this week. A customer paid, and the payment showed as 'pending' in their account until 48 hours later, when it stopped showing as pending (they generously shared a screenshot with me).

I of course contacted Pingit (aka Barclays) to ask where the money was. After first being told that it was up to the person paying to ask her bank where the money was, I insisted that was ludicrous (since it was a debit card payment) and was transferred to someone who said much the same thing until they realised that the customer had paid with a debit card via the pingit.me link mentioned.

Pingit are currently 'investigating' - and I think I'm done with them if I never get the money - but I'm curious to understand how this works.

I assume that to all intents and purposes it's like the relationship between any customer and any business, e.g. Amazon. If Amazon sell you something and the money doesn't go into their bank account, no bank is going to say to Amazon "ask your customer to ask his bank where the money is". So what do the bank say and do?

Googling has taught me little, other than there seems to be a process whereby the debit card 'admin' run some checks, then request the money from the customer's bank, before passing it on to the seller's bank. Is that about right? Businesses I'm sure are used to delays between payments being made in store and then received, so what (on average) would they expect that delay to be? And in any case, would this apply to the Pingit situation?

(Note, for what it's worth, I do not have a Barclays account as such, I have a Pingit app and that's it. The customer in question doesn't bank with Barclays either - but in any case I suspect that it's irrelevant because it is not a bank to bank transfer, it's a debit card to bank transfer).

Anyone with experience of receiving debit card payments in their business and/or familiar with the Pingit process, I'd love to get your input!

Thanks

Richard

Hazzanet

I suppose the first question I would ask is whether the transaction has disappeared off your Pingit account?  It might be that the authorisation has "fallen off" and the transaction hasn't settled?  

As an example, I bought something once from a retailer and the authorisation disappeared after about three days.  It didn't actually post/debit on my account until three months later.  

pbrichard

Hazzanet said:

I suppose the first question I would ask is whether the transaction has disappeared off your Pingit account?  It might be that the authorisation has "fallen off" and the transaction hasn't settled?  

As an example, I bought something once from a retailer and the authorisation disappeared after about three days.  It didn't actually post/debit on my account until three months later.  

Thanks for your thoughts - I may not have been clear (or I've misunderstood your point).

The 'request' for money came from me (via a URL that is generated by Pingit so people can pay me). The other person used the link to pay me to my Pingit account with her debit card. She has been debited for the amount on her card/bank account. But I have not received the money in my Pingit account.

So the money has 'evaporated' and I don't know what to do next. Pingit (Barclays) have not been helpful.

If what you mean is - the debit from the payer might eventually appear as a credit on my Pingit account - that's great, but I kind of want to understand why it hasn't already, and this is probably something to do with the way debit card transactions are processed by banks, which I'd like to understand so I can talk to Pingit with a little more knowledge.

Hazzanet

pbrichard said:

Thanks for your thoughts - I may not have been clear (or I've misunderstood your point).

The 'request' for money came from me (via a URL that is generated by Pingit so people can pay me). The other person used the link to pay me to my Pingit account with her debit card. She has been debited for the amount on her card/bank account. But I have not received the money in my Pingit account.

So the money has 'evaporated' and I don't know what to do next. Pingit (Barclays) have not been helpful.

If what you mean is - the debit from the payer might eventually appear as a credit on my Pingit account - that's great, but I kind of want to understand why it hasn't already, and this is probably something to do with the way debit card transactions are processed by banks, which I'd like to understand so I can talk to Pingit with a little more knowledge.

I may be reading this incorrectly, but it looks like you're contradicting yourself.  In the first post you state:

"A customer paid, and the payment showed as 'pending' in their account until 48 hours later, when it stopped showing as pending (they generously shared a screenshot with me)."

and in your second post you state:

"She has been debited for the amount on her card/bank account. But I have not received the money in my Pingit account."

So we have established that it's not in your Pingit Account; has the customer's bank account been debited? - i.e. has it changed from "pending" to a "real completed" transaction, or has it disappeared from the account.  Your first post suggests the latter?