TrueLayer setup

cricketfanatic

I am thinking of selling my car via a well known car buying service, and have an appt with them later this week.  They have asked for my bank account details in advance so that, if  I decide to sell to them, they can make the payment in to my account details count using Truelayer.  I'm naturally a bit wary of providing these details in advance, and have never heard of Truelayer, although a bit of research shows that they are part of Open Banking and are FCA registered.  I asked why they need details in advance rather than on the day and they said it is to enable the transfer mechanism to be set up in advance, and that I would see the money in my account before leaving the car with them.  I suppose that I could go ahead and visit them, and then provide details if I am going ahead, but really don't want to make two visits if I can avoid it.
Has anyone had any experience of this approach, and am I being overly cautious?
Thanks in advance for any views

born_again

Not anything they can do with sort code & account no. Other than maybe set up a DD. Which is easy to get money back from.

Daliah

That's a really weird request.

There is absolutely no reason why you should need to set up anything "Truelayer" to receive a payment into your account. All they need is your account name, sort code and account number, which is information you can give them without any issues. They can transfer the money to you using Faster Payment.

Truelayer is used to pull money out of current accounts. 

wmb194

Daliah said:

That's a really weird request.

There is absolutely no reason why you should need to set up anything "Truelayer" to receive a payment into your account. All they need is your account name, sort code and account number, which is information you can give them without any issues. They can transfer the money to you using Faster Payment.

Truelayer is used to pull money out of current accounts. 

Perhaps it's initiated as a refund?

https://truelayer.com/payments

Daliah

I would think the accountants of a reputable firm would flinch if the bank account shows refunds without matching payments. But even if they did process payments as refunds, it is the purchaser who have to set it up, not the seller.

Aside of this, "bank-verified account information" is provided by all banks, for personal and business accounts. They might or might not use TrueLayer under the covers for this.

Have you used TrueLayer, btw? I have, about two dozen times. Only for transferring money to my own accounts. There is nothing you as the current account user have to set up for it. TrueLayer is a piece of infrastructure software which banking apps can deploy and which gets invoked for certain transactions. E.g. to make deposits from your current account into a Tandem savings account, or a Tesco Clubcard Pay+ account. You still have the option to also do these transfers via Faster Payment. In my experience, Faster Payment gets executed faster than TrueLayer transactions, but the latter offers the advantage that you don't have to type in your sort code and account number - you just get directed, in the receiving account, to logging into your current account and authorising TrueLayer to take money out of it. You then get redirected back into the receiving account, and the money then lands in the receiving account a little, or not so little, while later. Authorising TrueLayer that way also authorises the receiving bank to read all your current account transactions for the next 90 days.

masonic

Handing over your sort code and account number (even in advance) is the least sketchy part of this story. It's the rest of it that raises red flags for me.

msallen

You have withheld the name of the car buying company, but lets assume its webuyanycar. I would suggest you post on an appropriate car buying/selling board and ask other people who have used webuyanycar whether this is standard procedure. If it is then that would suggest it's fine, if not then that would suggest you've somehow got involved with scammers pretending to be webuyanycar.

wmb194

It occurs to me that this could just be a case of someone latching onto the wrong terminology e.g., when private individuals these days say 'Bacs transfer' when they really should say 'faster payment.'

cricketfanatic

Thanks for your responses everyone.  I've re-posted in the Car forum to see what experience others have of Cazoo.

TangoGolf

Truelayer is use by Tandem Bank for example to transfer moneys in (and presumabley out).

Daliah

TangoGolf said:

Truelayer is use by Tandem Bank for example to transfer moneys in (and presumabley out).

In yes, out may be. As an end-user, you can see that TrueLayer is involved in depositing money if you use the pull-in method (you can also use push-in, i.e. Faster Payment). When you make a withdrawal from Tandem, it can only be made to a previously verified current account, and it is transparent to the end user how the withdrawal is processed. Whatever method Tandem use to send the money, it is certainly not entirely instant. I made a test withdrawal about 10 minutes ago, and it is yet to arrive in my previously verified current account.

UPDATE: withdrawal arrived around 20 minutes after request.