Bank repeatedly cancelling money transfer to a different bank

Albermarle

Peggy0628 said:

kazwookie said:

The problem is   'the just over £10K.'

Suggest she moves £8k today, and the rest over the weekend.

How do you know payment over 10k are suspicious for them but 8k is not? There is no info anywhere on their website or T&C as far as she knows that states limits. There's a limit on how much you can transfer per day but the amount's a lot higher than her bank balance. 

Basically all banks , to a greater or lesser extent, have become more sensitive to customers potentially being scammed and are blocking anything that might seem a bit suspicious .

Peggy0628

@Albermarle She understand that, but it doesn't explain why the payment for blocked the second time etc. Surely after blocking it the first time and then her calling them to restore her online access and her explaining the situations, they should had made a note on the system to complete the payment once it was set up the second time.
She's just going it circles with them: Set up payment - get blocked - call to unblock - told to set up payment again - get blocked and so on and on... It's they're treating each payment on its own instead of considering the whole picture. It should not be this complicated.

masonic

Peggy0628 said:

@Albermarle She understand that, but it doesn't explain why the payment for blocked the second time etc. Surely after blocking it the first time and then her calling them to restore her online access and her explaining the situations, they should had made a note on the system to complete the payment once it was set up the second time.
She's just going it circles with them: Set up payment - get blocked - call to unblock - told to set up payment again - get blocked and so on and on... It's they're treating each payment on its own instead of considering the whole picture. It should not be this complicated.

Yes, they should have ensured the payment could be made after verifying the circumstances. Nothing wrong with the initial action they took, but their follow-up has been unsatisfactory.

dunstonh

I wonder if a crossfiring alert was triggered by Barclays software?   

GeoffTF

Peggy0628 said:

They restored her online access and told told her the payment was cancelled so she had to set it up again (they were unable to process the payment over the phone).

Barclays says that they can process Faster Payments using Telephone Banking:

https://www.barclays.co.uk/current-accounts/online-payment-limits/

For Personal customers the overall daily payment limit to third parties is £50,000, for Premier and Business it’s £100,000.

The Online Banking helpdesk cannot make payments on your behalf.

To make payments over the limit, call Telephone Banking if you're registered for the service, your Premier Banking team or contact your branch.

I do not have a Barclays account, but I find that the best method with Santander is to phone them. If Barclays will not do the transfer by Telephone Banking she should ask why. Before phoning it is important to do careful checks. Search the FCA register for the bank concerned. Take the bank's web address from the FCA register entry, and paste it into your browser. Send £1 and make sure that it arrives in your account. Do not phone the bank until you have done all of that.

ranciduk

I once tried to move £5k from a rubbish TSB account over the phone with telephone banking

wont be doing that again

I now make a point of moving money in little chunks instead- it’s a pain, but I’d rather that than be grilled by the gestapo for an hour

GeoffTF

ranciduk said:

I once tried to move £5k from a rubbish TSB account over the phone with telephone banking

wont be doing that again

I now make a point of moving money in little chunks instead- it’s a pain, but I’d rather that than be grilled by the gestapo for an hour

That is not an option for me with Santander. I regularly transfer £50K+ sums to banks recommended by MSE. I have to put up with the security quizzes (there are usually two - they insist on ringing me back - and I sometimes have to talk to security too). They are trying to protect my money, so I cannot complain. Better that than be too lax.

Daliah

It's cheaper for banks to block payments and employ an interrogation team than being forced to pay out large sums of money to people who would fall victim to scams (in which the victims might even be actively involved themselves)

Unfortunately, this means that many genuine payments are now a real pain to make.

I was interrogated myself by Santander Security the other day, on a modest £4k payment to a payee I had used dozens of times before (one of my own accounts) but which was blocked by their fraud detection software. I got through to CS pretty swiftly, and they concluded they needed to transfer my call to their Security. A full 38 minutes later, Security finally answers. A friendly enough bloke insisted on working through what clearly was the "check for scams" script he had to follow, wouldn't take my repeated assurance that the payment was ok, it was destined to my own account........I couldn't really get mad with him because he had to ask all those questions to be certain I wasn't lying (as some of the scammed people have done, on instructions from the scammers). Another 10 minutes later, my payment was finally released. Hopefully over time the scamsters will get deterred so effectively that fewer payments will get blocked, and/or the fraud detection software will become somewhat smarter.

Vortigern

Is Strong Customer Authentication the issue here?

Whenever I set up a new payment into a Virgin (former Yorkshire) account the SCA is unable to check that my name matches the sort code/account number. My bank allows me to proceed, with warnings etc.  Perhaps Barclays does it differently?

Supplementary question. Why does Virgin not respond to SCA queries?

masonic

Vortigern said:

Is Strong Customer Authentication the issue here?

Whenever I set up a new payment into a Virgin (former Yorkshire) account the SCA is unable to check that my name matches the sort code/account number. My bank allows me to proceed, with warnings etc.  Perhaps Barclays does it differently?

Supplementary question. Why does Virgin not respond to SCA queries?

Do you mean Confirmation of Payee? That is the system whereby the account name can be checked when setting up a new payee. Strong Customer Authentication is for establishing it is you making a card payment or logging in to your account, and involves receiving a one time code or push notification. All providers must now use SCA.

Only a small number of participants were included in the initial roll-out of CoP, the main banks and a small number of others. Those offering primarily savings accounts were generally not included. They should be brought on board eventually, but clearly only those savings providers who issue each account with a unique 6-digit sort code and 8 digit account number can use the system. Even then, some providers (who use a separate clearing account) will be left out.