Confirmation of Payee - is it as poor for everyone else?

robatwork

I'll resurrect my thread as I had occasion to setup a new S/O which I haven't done for ages. CoP still failed.

The payee has a standard Barclays current account, and had given me the incorrect account number. The error message I got from Santander when I put the details in is very unclear (I cut off the word "not" on the right):




Barclays IS part of the checking service - the error should have been "Can't match account number to name" or "Invalid account number" or "Cannot locate this account for this sort code" - not this ambiguous mess.

When I put the correct details in I didn't get an error ie. it matched with CoP. 

RG2015

I have just tried this on NatWest with the same sort code but a made up account number and get the following response.

The account number you've entered doesn't match the sort code, please check and try again.

This is unambiguous, so Santander are rather slack with their error message.

With hindsight is would have been much better if the banks had standardised their error messages. It's a good job that they were not as careless on the implementation of the Faster Payments initiative.

eskbanker

Inconsistent messaging has been identified as an area of improvement within the PSR's consultation document that's being used to shape the next phases of CoP rollout, see paragraphs 4.34 onwards at:

https://www.psr.org.uk/media/ehfnk4qh/cp21-6-confirmation-of-payee-call-for-views.pdf

IvanOpinion

I have had some problems but am happy that banks are doing more to improve security.