New rules requiring "exact account name" to be supplied with payments 6 July at 12:36AM in Budgeting & Bank Accounts 65 replies 2K views

picks

It seems that in the last couple of months banks, building societies and similar financial institutions have been required to ensure their customers give the exact account name of whoever they are paying when making outgoing payments. The intention is good insofar as to prevent payments arriving into the wrong account. The bad news is that some financial institutions (eg Santander Bank) have made this a nightmare for customers like myself. This is because I have a number of different personal accounts with other banks and building societies to which I make payments. So, in all these cases the the exact name of the person being paid is my name.own name and exactly the same, viz my name (eg "Picks Accounts").. The problem then becomes when I look at my list of payees, they are all the same viz:

Payee1: Picks Accounts
Payee 2: Picks Accounts

...

Payee n: Picks Accounts

but each of them is an account (in my name) with a different bank or building society. So when I want to make a payment to one of my external accounts, there is no way from the list as presented to me by Santander to tell which is which. .I've raised this with Santander and suggested they provide an optional additional field to help me distinguish between each payee line where I could, for example, enter the bank/building society details. Previously I entered those details as my "payee", but under the new system that will not be permitted. Their reaction has been "tough luck you'll just have to open up each payee in turn, look at the sort code, account number and reference (if any) to pick out the correct payee.". For me this can turn things into a nightmare in sending my money to the correct account. To make matters worse, it appears that on the resulting statement it will just say I've paid £xxx to "Picks Accounts", giving me no idea to which bank or building society my payment went.

eskbanker

Oddly, on one of the previous threads about the Confirmation of Payee initiative, Santander were specifically cited as having a nickname facility that sounds like exactly what you were looking for:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/76904255/#Comment_76904255

soulsaver

Recognising the intended ac from multiple payee's of the same name issue already exists with Santander, how do you handle it now? 
AIUI it doesn't have to be an exact match in the future.. you'll be offered the opportunity to elect to proceed with a non match.

SnowTiger

It would make sense for Santander to allow customers to assign 'nicknames' or show the payment reference field in the list of payees.

You don't have to enter the exact name of a payee when setting up a new transfer.  You can, within reason, enter whatever name you like.  You'll just have to click through all the dire warnings about making a payment to the wrong account.

Edit to add that Santander's app does show the payee reference field when you pull up a list of payees.

If I were you I'd phrase my suggestion as a complaint.  It appears Santander offered you a work around to the problem instead of adding it to their to do fix list.

happy_hazelnuts

The title of your post is incorrect in that the banks do not **require** you to enter the exact account name as if you don't you can always override it

as mentioned by others some banks have nickname fields and I can add that First Direct are one of these

colsten

picks said:

The bad news is that some financial institutions (eg Santander Bank) have made this a nightmare for customers like myself.

I consider it a minor nuisance rather than a nightmare, as you can still use whatever name you like. You just have to ignore the warning about the mismatch, and confirm that any payment is entirely your responsibility.

picks said:

So when I want to make a payment to one of my external accounts, there is no way from the list as presented to me by Santander to tell which is which. .I've raised this with Santander and suggested they provide an optional additional field to help me distinguish between each payee line where I could, for example, enter the bank/building society details. Previously I entered those details as my "payee", but under the new system that will not be permitted. 

1. you can continue to use your existing payees
2. as I said above, you can set up your new payees with exactly the same system as before
   
   
   

Since Santander implemented their account name checking, I have set up at least 10 new payees, all for accounts in my name outside Santander. I continue to name the payees as I have done for years, so I can tell from the name exactly where the payment goes. The only difference is now that, when setting up a new payee, I have to go through the silly name checking and confirm that I want to proceed despite the mismatch. That normally adds about 6-10 seconds 😂 to the setting up of a new payee.

colsten

eskbanker said:

Oddly, on one of the previous threads about the Confirmation of Payee initiative, Santander were specifically cited as having a nickname facility that sounds like exactly what you were looking for:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/76904255/#Comment_76904255

Except it isn't actually true that Santander had "the sence to have a "nickname" field in their payee setup". There is no nickname field. Perhaps the poster got confused by the 'Reference' field, which has always been there and continues to be there.

But as I said before, it really isn't an issue as you can continue to use what you like in your payee name field. 

MovingForwards

Can you not add some way of identifying it in the payment reference section? That's what I do with all my accounts (I'm not with Santander)

colsten

MovingForwards said:

Can you not add some way of identifying it in the payment reference section? That's what I do with all my accounts (I'm not with Santander)

Of course you could. But

1. you might need the Reference field for an actual Reference
2. you can only see the Reference in the payee list in the mobile app, not in online banking
3. you would then have two conventions for identifying your accounts - your existing ones, and your new ones
4. since you can continue to use the naming convention you used for the last umpteen years, what would be the point?

SnowTiger

For those not in the know, this is how Santander displays a list of payees on its website: 

colsten

That's right, no Reference shown in the payee list in Santander online banking. They do show it in the mobile app.

And they don't show any nickname in online banking or in the mobile app since they don't have any nickname field at all