Problems with Nationwide's new Faster Payments limits

polyphonic99

Nationwide recently (I think) changed their Faster Payment limits from £10K per transaction (which allowed multiple £10K transaction per day) to £25K per "Calendar Day". This can be a problem if you are trying to open or transfer a maturing fixed rate bond. with a value of over £25K to another financial institution and your linked current account is held at Nationwide.

Many Finacial intitutions allow multiple deposits within the funding period. The funding period is often either 10 or 14 days from opening the accoutn, though some far-sighted banks like Secure Trust Bank allow 30 days. These allow you to make multiple deposits over multiple days, though you will be losing out on your full interest until you have completed all your deposits, to the benefit of Nationwide. However there are some Banks and Building Societes that allow only a single deposit. In this case, Nationwide's policy change means you are either limited to a £25K deposit , or you have to pay for CHAPS to make a larger transfer.

Perhaps Nationwide had the security interests of its customers in mind, or perhaps their liabilities for “authorised push payments” when making this change, but for those who are careful when making large transactions, Nationwide are effectively removing the ability to use Faster Payments and are pushing those customers to the chargeable CHAPS service, currently £20 per transfer.

Although this mainly affects Fixed Rate Bonds, it can also affect Easy Access Account. In a situation where interest rates change frequently, you may want to move from yesterdays best easy access account to today’s best, in which case you will also be caught if you try and transfer more than £25K eg new payee, no history, therefore 25K limit.

Nationwide say that you can transfer up to £100K per calendar day, but that’s not really true.

https://www.nationwide.co.uk/help/payments/transfer-limits-and-timescales/

Branch Limits - Up to 4 x £25K at a branch, as long as you bring proof of ID , wade through the driving rain, pay for parking, and allocate the time, and still have a local branch etc.

Online Limits - You can only send up to £25,000 online per calendar day if you:

1. make a payment to an existing payee who you haven't paid many times before
2. make a payment to someone you haven't paid before (eg new fixed rate bond provider)
3. set up a standing order using our Internet Bank or Banking app.

They don’t specify what “many times before” means, Customer Services don’t know either, it’s up to the computer, which just says “No”. I tried a transfer to an Easy Access account that had raised its interest rate. The account was in my name, I had set it up 3 months before and I had already made 5 transactions into it, that was still limited to 25K, 5 transactions, apparently, is not many.

Note - if you send a payment to an outside bank, say £10K, and that bank is closed for maintenance and bounces back your transfer immediately, then Nationwide does not recalculate your daily transfer allowance, even if the transaction type is marked “Correction of transfer to”. Your daily transfer allowance is reduced from 25K to 15K until the next calendar day. Obviously, this is a system bug.

I don’t know how many other banks are limiting Faster Payments in this way, perhaps MSE could do the research and provide a list and the limits, as it would encourage me to change my current account provider. It would also be useful if MSE could publish the “funding period” for all its “best” Fixed Rate Bonds and Fixed Rate ISA” so you can plan around these faster payment restrictions, and maybe encourage banks and BSs who have short funding periods and only allow a single deposit to update their rules in light of theses changes to faster payments.

In the meantime, I’m looking for a new bank who will provide me with a modern faster payments system that meets my needs.

PS Apologies if this has been raised before, I tried a quick search but couldn;t find anything

Section62

polyphonic99 said:

Perhaps Nationwide had the security interests of its customers in mind, or perhaps their liabilities for “authorised push payments” when making this change, but for those who are careful when making large transactions, Nationwide are effectively removing the ability to use Faster Payments and are pushing those customers to the chargeable CHAPS service, currently £20 per transfer.

Nationwide sold these changes as a customer service improvement (no longer will you be bound by the £10k transaction limit) but in reality for many of us the effect is a negative one.

Just another reason* in a long list to move business away from Nationwide and to other financial services providers.

(*the principal issue IMV is the unpredictability of whether the transaction will work, until you try it.  Other provider's fixed limits remove that uncertainty)

Rob5342

I wish I had this problem

Starling don't list a daily limit but they do say they may need to contact you to approve some payments. I don't like Nationwide as they are so old fashioned, but this sort of limit seems to apply with lots of banks so I don't think they are too bad in that respect.

friolento

Duplicate of https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6487443/problem-with-faster-payments-from-nationwide-into-fixed-rate-bonds

GeoffTF

Santander allows up to £100K faster Payments over the telephone. Starling sets the limit at £1 million, but says that account limits apply, and they do not say what those limits are. First Direct says £50K. CHAPS is free for Barclays, and with Santander for their Edge accounts, but that is not instant and I expect that you have to go into a branch. Do you need an appointment? I do not know. I am using Santander and do not see a better option. Santander also allows £50K MasterCard payments.

wmb194

GeoffTF said:

Santander allows up to £100K faster Payments over the telephone. Starling sets the limit at £1 million, but says that account limits apply, and they do not say what those limits are. First Direct says £50K. CHAPS is free for Barclays, and with Santander for their Edge accounts, but that is not instant and I expect that you have to go into a branch. Do you need an appointment? I do not know. I am using Santander and do not see a better option. Santander also allows £50K MasterCard payments.

With Barclays you can setup Chaps payments online.

"You can do this in a branch or you can do it online, if you’re registered for Online Banking and you have a PINsentry."

https://www.barclays.co.uk/help/payments/payment-information/chaps-payments/

GeoffTF

wmb194 said:

GeoffTF said:

Santander allows up to £100K faster Payments over the telephone. Starling sets the limit at £1 million, but says that account limits apply, and they do not say what those limits are. First Direct says £50K. CHAPS is free for Barclays, and with Santander for their Edge accounts, but that is not instant and I expect that you have to go into a branch. Do you need an appointment? I do not know. I am using Santander and do not see a better option. Santander also allows £50K MasterCard payments.

With Barclays you can setup Chaps payments online.

"You can do this in a branch or you can do it online, if you’re registered for Online Banking and you have a PINsentry."

https://www.barclays.co.uk/help/payments/payment-information/chaps-payments/

"Sometimes payments are held for security reasons – these won’t be sent until we’ve finished our review." That looks rather open ended to me. With Santander, the payment usually goes through immediately, or after being put through to security. There is often an immediate call back too. The same comment applies to Starling. An on the spot decision is what is required here.

wmb194

GeoffTF said:

wmb194 said:

GeoffTF said:

Santander allows up to £100K faster Payments over the telephone. Starling sets the limit at £1 million, but says that account limits apply, and they do not say what those limits are. First Direct says £50K. CHAPS is free for Barclays, and with Santander for their Edge accounts, but that is not instant and I expect that you have to go into a branch. Do you need an appointment? I do not know. I am using Santander and do not see a better option. Santander also allows £50K MasterCard payments.

With Barclays you can setup Chaps payments online.

"You can do this in a branch or you can do it online, if you’re registered for Online Banking and you have a PINsentry."

https://www.barclays.co.uk/help/payments/payment-information/chaps-payments/

"Sometimes payments are held for security reasons – these won’t be sent until we’ve finished our review." That looks rather open ended to me. With Santander, the payment usually goes through immediately, or after being put through to security. There is often an immediate call back too. The same comment applies to Starling. An on the spot decision is what is required here.

Why wouldn't you expect Barclays to hedge? People complain that Santander doesn't always release payments even after you've spoken to its fraud department.

GeoffTF

wmb194 said:

GeoffTF said:

wmb194 said:

GeoffTF said:

Santander allows up to £100K faster Payments over the telephone. Starling sets the limit at £1 million, but says that account limits apply, and they do not say what those limits are. First Direct says £50K. CHAPS is free for Barclays, and with Santander for their Edge accounts, but that is not instant and I expect that you have to go into a branch. Do you need an appointment? I do not know. I am using Santander and do not see a better option. Santander also allows £50K MasterCard payments.

With Barclays you can setup Chaps payments online.

"You can do this in a branch or you can do it online, if you’re registered for Online Banking and you have a PINsentry."

https://www.barclays.co.uk/help/payments/payment-information/chaps-payments/

"Sometimes payments are held for security reasons – these won’t be sent until we’ve finished our review." That looks rather open ended to me. With Santander, the payment usually goes through immediately, or after being put through to security. There is often an immediate call back too. The same comment applies to Starling. An on the spot decision is what is required here.

Why wouldn't you expect Barclays to hedge? People complain that Santander doesn't always release payments even after you've spoken to its fraud department.

Yes I would not expect a clear statement from them, and Santander says nothing on this matter. I have never had problems from Santander with payments to my own accounts when I have done all the checking that I reasonably can do. It is, however, possible that I get more slack than some as a result of a long track record of making large payments without any problems. It is also evident that some of the people posting here are not very clued up. Clearly, if Santander identified a problem, I would be grateful. If they blocked a payment unreasonably, I would just move the money to another bank.

If I had to jump ship, First Direct should be a safe bet. Starling is interesting. It would be helpful to hear of experience there. I spoke to a lady who had done a big payment with Lloyds a few weeks ago. She had to go into a branch and fill in lots of forms.

Barkin

GeoffTF said:

wmb194 said:

GeoffTF said:

wmb194 said:

GeoffTF said:

Santander allows up to £100K faster Payments over the telephone. Starling sets the limit at £1 million, but says that account limits apply, and they do not say what those limits are. First Direct says £50K. CHAPS is free for Barclays, and with Santander for their Edge accounts, but that is not instant and I expect that you have to go into a branch. Do you need an appointment? I do not know. I am using Santander and do not see a better option. Santander also allows £50K MasterCard payments.

With Barclays you can setup Chaps payments online.

"You can do this in a branch or you can do it online, if you’re registered for Online Banking and you have a PINsentry."

https://www.barclays.co.uk/help/payments/payment-information/chaps-payments/

"Sometimes payments are held for security reasons – these won’t be sent until we’ve finished our review." That looks rather open ended to me. With Santander, the payment usually goes through immediately, or after being put through to security. There is often an immediate call back too. The same comment applies to Starling. An on the spot decision is what is required here.

Why wouldn't you expect Barclays to hedge? People complain that Santander doesn't always release payments even after you've spoken to its fraud department.

I spoke to a lady who had just done a big payment with Lloyds a few weeks ago. She had to go into a branch and fill in lots of forms.

Hyperbole surely?

I made a large transfer recently, and did it in branch as it was over their £25k online limit.
After explaining what I wanted to do - amount, payee details etc - I put my card into the reader and entered my pin, then I had to open my app to approve the transfer.

Job done in ~5mins.

The only form was a single signature on a single sheet of paper, to acknowledge that I'd been asked the usual anti-fraud questions. 

boingy

GeoffTF said:

If I had to jump ship, First Direct should be a safe bet. 

Don't be too sure. Today FD blocked one of my transfers. It's slightly annoying that they do so but it's REALLY annoying that it took so long on the phone to unblock it. I got through to a human straight away, we were through security with a minute or so but then they had to run through a whole script of silly questions about whether anyone had asked me to transfer the money or was forcing me to do so etc. Over 15 minutes of being treated like an idiot when all they had to do was verify my ID and then ask if the transaction is really what I want. The transaction was to an account in my name and to which I have previously transferred money. Their approach just lacked a bit of common sense. It should not take 15 minutes.

Mind you, there are worse out there. One of the Co-op's questions in the same scenario was "and are you feeling any more anxious than usual today" and I thought "Of course I am and my bank is causing it!"