CoP and the £1 test deposit

Molehusband

RG2015 said:

Molehusband said:

RG2015 said:

ColdIron said:

I have always named the payee for my own accounts what I want it to be. Chase savings, First Direct RS or whatever and just disregard the CoP warnings. It's never been disallowed for me. Otherwise my payee lists, statements etc would be unusable as above. I do have some accounts where I haven't added a new payee for years so maybe I'll hit a bump in the road sometime but I'll cross that bridge if I come to it

I have just tried setting up a payee (in my name) in Santander online banking and I can use any name I like.

Obviously, CoP fails if I don't match my name, but I can still use a personal naming convention if I choose to do so.

Yes and no. Yes, with Santander you can in theory set up personal payee names but:

1 It restricts the names you can use. I've never found the rules for that as Santander doesn't publish them but certainly the number of characters is restricted and certain characters/character combinations are not accepted. However, you only find out after setting up the name.
2 Unlike the sensible "nickname" facility with Santander,
 (a) only once you've made your first payment will you find out if Santander has altered the payee name.
 (b) Secondly (unlike nickname), having made a payment you can never change your chosen payee name without totally deleting the payee and setting it up again from scratch.
3 As you have already indicated that, since CoP will always fail to validate if you enter your personal name, you have to go back to using the £1 initial payment pantomime to validate your payee.

So the Santander implementation of CoP is extremely poor for those of us who wish to have an optional nickname facility. It certainly takes me back to being obliged using the pre-CoP method for setting up payees.

What is the sensible nickname facility scheme with Santander?

What I meant to say was "Unlike the sensible "nickname" facility (which is available with banks other than Santander) " Santander itself does not have a nickname facility. When I suggested this to Santander they responded they are not interested in offering an optional nickname.

Molehusband

RG2015 said:

Molehusband said:

Daliah said:

Molehusband said:

As regards the CoP validation itself, I never bother to use it with Santander as I'm so used to the £1 pantomime going back many decades. Until Santander get off their backsides and implement the optional nickname field, the Santander £1 pantomime will continue for me.

It's entirely your right and your choice if you don't want to make life easier for yourself.

I make my life easier by doing the vast majority of my bank transfers using a current account which implements CoP properly by having the optional nickname field.

Which bank is this?

TSB is my preferred bank for transferring money.

Molehusband

tempus_fugit said:

Molehusband said:

RG2015 said:

This is interesting. The problem is not with CoP then, but with Santander and the absence of the “nickname” facility.

I have no such problem with NatWest being my main hub, and naming my accounts according to my convention. 

Yes the problem is with the implementation of CoP. Santander is one of a number of banks (including Halifax) who don't seem to understand that many customers wish to have a way of identifying their payees using an optional additional "nickname" field. It should also be possible to alter the "Nickname" at any time without having to reset the Payee. It's a very simple and straightforward thing to add this field, but so far both Santander and Halifax have effectively told me "Push off, we're not interested".
I think it would be helpful if the Payment Systems Regulator would make these layabouts implement the optional "Nickname" field.

That's an issue whether CoP is used or not. I have that issue with a number of my banks, where payees were set up long before CoP came into use. Also, CoP can still be used when making a payment to an account for the first time whether or not there is the option for a nickname to be set. I always use CoP if it is available as it is a handy extra level of checking to make sure you are sending the money to the correct account. After that, if there is no nickname available it is a painstaking process of checking each stored payee's bank details to work out which is the correct one, but I would have this problem whether or not CoP had been used to set it up for the first time.

In my case most of the payments I make are into savings accounts (often with Building Societies or similar) and the majority of them are not registered with CoP. Also from time to time even if the receiving account is registered with CoP I have found CoP temporarily out of action. Therefore, for both these reasons, currently for the majority of my payaments I still use the £1 pantomime.

MACKEM99

I put the nickname in the reference box when it's there and I still do small payment first

Ergates

Molehusband said:

As regards the CoP validation itself, I never bother to use it with Santander as I'm so used to the £1 pantomime going back many decades. Until Santander get off their backsides and implement the optional nickname field, the Santander £1 pantomime will continue for me.

You're still using it with CoP - you're just choosing to ignore the response.

Molehusband said:

Daliah said:

Molehusband said:

As regards the CoP validation itself, I never bother to use it with Santander as I'm so used to the £1 pantomime going back many decades. Until Santander get off their backsides and implement the optional nickname field, the Santander £1 pantomime will continue for me.

It's entirely your right and your choice if you don't want to make life easier for yourself.

I make my life easier by doing the vast majority of my bank transfers using a current account which implements CoP properly by having the optional nickname field.

That's not a matter of implementing CoP "properly" as it's not part of the requirements - that's just good user interface design.

Ergates

Daliah said:

I rarely use CoP, for the reasons outlined by Reginald Molehusband.

Any payments to my own accounts use a fictitious payee name, in the format "My bank xxxx", where bank is obviously the (abbreviated) name of the receiving bank, and xxxx the last 4 digits of the receiving account number. I use this nomenclature even at banks which support nicknames (Natwest/RBS, VM) as I don't want to break my naming system. I only use the £1 method for accounts which require a Reference for the routing of payments, as sometimes I can't be sure I have got the correct Reference number. 

I do find CoP useful when paying a third party.

You always use CoP when setting up a new payee now.  You can choose ignore the reponse, but you can't choose not to use it.

Molehusband

Ergates said:

Daliah said:

I rarely use CoP, for the reasons outlined by Reginald Molehusband.

Any payments to my own accounts use a fictitious payee name, in the format "My bank xxxx", where bank is obviously the (abbreviated) name of the receiving bank, and xxxx the last 4 digits of the receiving account number. I use this nomenclature even at banks which support nicknames (Natwest/RBS, VM) as I don't want to break my naming system. I only use the £1 method for accounts which require a Reference for the routing of payments, as sometimes I can't be sure I have got the correct Reference number. 

I do find CoP useful when paying a third party.

You always use CoP when setting up a new payee now.  You can choose ignore the reponse, but you can't choose not to use it.

No you're not always using CoP. You can only use CoP if the receiving account is registered for CoP and many of the accounts I use (especially those with Building Societies) are not registered for use with CoP. Secondly, from time to time CoP is not working due to technical problems and I get a message that the CoP check is temporarily down but the payee setup will continue bypassing CoP altogether.

RG2015

I understand the comments about CoP usage.

If the paying bank operates CoP, then it is impossible to bypass this when setting up a new payee.

Therefore, you cannot say that you never use CoP, only that you choose to ignore the result.

Daliah

Ergates said:

Daliah said:

I rarely use CoP, for the reasons outlined by Reginald Molehusband.

Any payments to my own accounts use a fictitious payee name, in the format "My bank xxxx", where bank is obviously the (abbreviated) name of the receiving bank, and xxxx the last 4 digits of the receiving account number. I use this nomenclature even at banks which support nicknames (Natwest/RBS, VM) as I don't want to break my naming system. I only use the £1 method for accounts which require a Reference for the routing of payments, as sometimes I can't be sure I have got the correct Reference number. 

I do find CoP useful when paying a third party.

You always use CoP when setting up a new payee now.  You can choose ignore the reponse, but you can't choose not to use it.

Yes, you are correct (where CoP is offered by the bank/BS). I should have said that I ignore the CoP results more often than not.

Ergates

Molehusband said:

Ergates said:

Daliah said:

I rarely use CoP, for the reasons outlined by Reginald Molehusband.

Any payments to my own accounts use a fictitious payee name, in the format "My bank xxxx", where bank is obviously the (abbreviated) name of the receiving bank, and xxxx the last 4 digits of the receiving account number. I use this nomenclature even at banks which support nicknames (Natwest/RBS, VM) as I don't want to break my naming system. I only use the £1 method for accounts which require a Reference for the routing of payments, as sometimes I can't be sure I have got the correct Reference number. 

I do find CoP useful when paying a third party.

You always use CoP when setting up a new payee now.  You can choose ignore the reponse, but you can't choose not to use it.

No you're not always using CoP. You can only use CoP if the receiving account is registered for CoP and many of the accounts I use (especially those with Building Societies) are not registered for use with CoP. Secondly, from time to time CoP is not working due to technical problems and I get a message that the CoP check is temporarily down but the payee setup will continue bypassing CoP altogether.

You're still using CoP.  It may be that the first step in the CoP check determines that the FI that holds the account isn't registered with CoP, but that's still a CoP check.   

Ditto if, for some reason, the CoP system of the holding FI is down, you're still going through the process.

The point being is that you cannot choose *not* to use CoP.  If you go onto your TSB banking app and set up a payment to a building society, it'll still ask you to fill in the name and account type (personal or business) because until the check has been performed it doesn't know if the FI is registered for CoP or not.  Likewise it can't possibly know if the holding FI's CoP system is down for maintenance or not.