Visibility of next day transactions

penners324

Ergates said:

eskbanker said:

Ergates said:

eskbanker said:

Sarahspangles said:

eskbanker said:

fluffymitten said:

Interesting. So how can Monzo and HSBC can show the date and value of a DD the day before it comes out of my account if they don't know this information? If they're guessing, it's a 100% accurate guess

My understanding is that direct debits use a BACS process, whose three working day timeframe means that paying banks can ascertain the exact value of a transaction a day in advance.

In Nationwide I can click in 'View and Cancel Payments' and scroll to Direct Debits and see the 'Last:' which is the date last requested, and amount debited. I can see both our credit cards requested payment on Friday, earlier than the billing dates, which fell at the weekend. However if I'd looked on Friday, the amount would have been the previous bill and not the amount which left our account today.

Yes, I'm saying that banks can see the value of a direct debit due to be taken the following business day, but, as covered earlier in the thread, few choose to make this visible to the account holder....

It depends on when the recipient bank runs their processing batch for upcoming DD payments - there is no fixed requirement for this, so it just depends on when they fit it in.

If they run it first thing in the morning, then they can display the upcoming value from that morning - which might add value to the customer so be worth while.

If, however, they start their batch at the end of the on-line day (say, 5pm) then the information wouldn't be available until later in the evening.  In those cases, spending a load of money developing a system that would display the upcoming payment to customers at 10 pm would probably not be worth the effort.

Well, yes, but it still boils down to the fact that it's within their control, i.e. a bank wishing to display that information to its customers can choose to do so.

On paper, yes.   In practice there's "can choose to do so" and there's "can choose to do so".

Yes they *could* rearrange their entire transaction processing batch to enable them to give customers slightly advance notice of a scheduled payment.  But the cost and risk involved would hugely outweigh the benefit, making it not really an option.

In practice, using estimates based on previous patterns of payments give 90% of the same benefit for 10% of the cost and 0% of the risk.  For payments that don't change - their estimates are pretty much spot on anyway.   For payments that *do* change, then the recipient is required to tell the customer of the changed amount anyway.

Why do you keep going on about estimated payments? 

The payer bank has the exact information at least 1 day before the payment goes out. 

SiliconChip

As it's unlikely that most banks will make changes to permit this any time soon (if ever) there is an alternative, which is what I do. 

For many years I have been using Microsoft Money to record and reconcile all my transactions, so for instance whenever I have a new credit card statement I reconcile all of the entries with my records and at the end of the process the direct debit payment is created for whatever date the statement says it will be taken.

It also has a feature to set up recurring bill payments which I use for things like Council Tax, where you can specify that the payment appears in the register a number of days in advance of when it's due to be taken.

It's a little work on your part but once you've set things up it's a matter of a few minutes each week.

Ergates

penners324 said:

Ergates said:

eskbanker said:

Ergates said:

eskbanker said:

Sarahspangles said:

eskbanker said:

fluffymitten said:

Interesting. So how can Monzo and HSBC can show the date and value of a DD the day before it comes out of my account if they don't know this information? If they're guessing, it's a 100% accurate guess

My understanding is that direct debits use a BACS process, whose three working day timeframe means that paying banks can ascertain the exact value of a transaction a day in advance.

In Nationwide I can click in 'View and Cancel Payments' and scroll to Direct Debits and see the 'Last:' which is the date last requested, and amount debited. I can see both our credit cards requested payment on Friday, earlier than the billing dates, which fell at the weekend. However if I'd looked on Friday, the amount would have been the previous bill and not the amount which left our account today.

Yes, I'm saying that banks can see the value of a direct debit due to be taken the following business day, but, as covered earlier in the thread, few choose to make this visible to the account holder....

It depends on when the recipient bank runs their processing batch for upcoming DD payments - there is no fixed requirement for this, so it just depends on when they fit it in.

If they run it first thing in the morning, then they can display the upcoming value from that morning - which might add value to the customer so be worth while.

If, however, they start their batch at the end of the on-line day (say, 5pm) then the information wouldn't be available until later in the evening.  In those cases, spending a load of money developing a system that would display the upcoming payment to customers at 10 pm would probably not be worth the effort.

Well, yes, but it still boils down to the fact that it's within their control, i.e. a bank wishing to display that information to its customers can choose to do so.

On paper, yes.   In practice there's "can choose to do so" and there's "can choose to do so".

Yes they *could* rearrange their entire transaction processing batch to enable them to give customers slightly advance notice of a scheduled payment.  But the cost and risk involved would hugely outweigh the benefit, making it not really an option.

In practice, using estimates based on previous patterns of payments give 90% of the same benefit for 10% of the cost and 0% of the risk.  For payments that don't change - their estimates are pretty much spot on anyway.   For payments that *do* change, then the recipient is required to tell the customer of the changed amount anyway.

Monzo, Starling & Chase use actual numbers not guesses.

If these banks do it so can others.

I've moved all banking to 1 of these for exactly that reason.

The DD system is a 3 day process as it uses BACS. So the payer bank definitely has this information. It isn't guessing.

Monzo and Starling are both recent start-up banks with no legacy estate to maintain or work around.  This is the primary reason they are able to be quicker on their feet with new features and gimics than the older banks - many of which will be using central payment systems originally built in the 70s and 80s.  Just ask TSB about the risks involved in monkeying about with those.  Chase has history in the US but is new to the UK so I *believe* they are the same in this regard.

Rob5342

You'd think that they would develop a new system alongside their existing one and then juat gradually migrate customers to it. It aeems very odd to me that banks that are a few years old can do a much better job than banks with hundreds of years of experience. 

Monzo definitely don't guess direct debits, they use the same data that every bank has but juat show it to you earlier. 

fluffymitten

It does make me wonder how HSBC can do it, as a old dinosaur legacy bank if it's so terribly difficult to implement a change to existing systems that have only existed since the 1950's. So the choice for me becomes about ethical banking vs convenience.

I just wanted to know which banks have chosen to provide the next day transaction information rather have a discussion about the technicalities of legacy COBOL banking systems and a lack of investment in giving customers helpful information.

Thanks all for your help. I consider my question answered.

Eco_Miser

Rob5342 said:

You'd think that they would develop a new system alongside their existing one and then juat gradually migrate customers to it. It aeems very odd to me that banks that are a few years old can do a much better job than banks with hundreds of years of experience. 

Monzo definitely don't guess direct debits, they use the same data that every bank has but juat show it to you earlier. 

Very few banks have 'hundreds of years of experience', and if they have, it's with quill pens and leather-bound ledgers, and messengers physically carrying cheques and banknotes between the London offices of the individual banks. Computerised banking won't be more than 70 years old.

Incidentally, back when Yorkshire Bank was owned by NAB, I could see tomorrow's transactions today (sometimes) by setting the displayed statement date in the future.

I think this stopped when CYBG rolled out a new, 'improved', online experience, and it's definitely not available with Virgin Money.

TheBanker

Rob5342 said:

You'd think that they would develop a new system alongside their existing one and then juat gradually migrate customers to it. It aeems very odd to me that banks that are a few years old can do a much better job than banks with hundreds of years of experience. 

Monzo definitely don't guess direct debits, they use the same data that every bank has but juat show it to you earlier. 

The banks are all gradually migrating from their old systems to more modern technology. But it's really complex, and costs billions of pounds. Mainly because you have to keep the old tech running - if you could close the bank for six months while you migrated things it would be much easier but you'd probably find that when the new system switched on, all the customers had gone somewhere else. As another poster said, TSB found to their cost the risk involved in trying to do 'big bang' migrations.

And a lot of the investment will be driven by what customer want, or what the regulators say customers want. I've never seen anyone ask for advance notice of Direct Debits before this thread. I have seen my bank spend a small fortune on fraud prevention tools like Confirmation of Payee and the endless scam warnings that pop up when I am trying to send £20 to the window cleaner... 

Ergates

penners324 said:

Ergates said:

eskbanker said:

Ergates said:

eskbanker said:

Sarahspangles said:

eskbanker said:

fluffymitten said:

Interesting. So how can Monzo and HSBC can show the date and value of a DD the day before it comes out of my account if they don't know this information? If they're guessing, it's a 100% accurate guess

My understanding is that direct debits use a BACS process, whose three working day timeframe means that paying banks can ascertain the exact value of a transaction a day in advance.

In Nationwide I can click in 'View and Cancel Payments' and scroll to Direct Debits and see the 'Last:' which is the date last requested, and amount debited. I can see both our credit cards requested payment on Friday, earlier than the billing dates, which fell at the weekend. However if I'd looked on Friday, the amount would have been the previous bill and not the amount which left our account today.

Yes, I'm saying that banks can see the value of a direct debit due to be taken the following business day, but, as covered earlier in the thread, few choose to make this visible to the account holder....

It depends on when the recipient bank runs their processing batch for upcoming DD payments - there is no fixed requirement for this, so it just depends on when they fit it in.

If they run it first thing in the morning, then they can display the upcoming value from that morning - which might add value to the customer so be worth while.

If, however, they start their batch at the end of the on-line day (say, 5pm) then the information wouldn't be available until later in the evening.  In those cases, spending a load of money developing a system that would display the upcoming payment to customers at 10 pm would probably not be worth the effort.

Well, yes, but it still boils down to the fact that it's within their control, i.e. a bank wishing to display that information to its customers can choose to do so.

On paper, yes.   In practice there's "can choose to do so" and there's "can choose to do so".

Yes they *could* rearrange their entire transaction processing batch to enable them to give customers slightly advance notice of a scheduled payment.  But the cost and risk involved would hugely outweigh the benefit, making it not really an option.

In practice, using estimates based on previous patterns of payments give 90% of the same benefit for 10% of the cost and 0% of the risk.  For payments that don't change - their estimates are pretty much spot on anyway.   For payments that *do* change, then the recipient is required to tell the customer of the changed amount anyway.

Why do you keep going on about estimated payments? 

The payer bank has the exact information at least 1 day before the payment goes out. 

Maybe try reading before responding - I addressed that exact point in that exact post.