RBS - confidential policy

Gers

Earlier today I had an Apple Pay payment for dental services declined twice despite there being more than double the required amount in my account. The account has always been my main account is fully funded/

I phone to enquire why the payment was declined and was told that it was down to a confidential policy.

Does anyone have any notion about this?

eskbanker

Banks won't disclose details of their security algorithms, which do indeed generate 'false positives' sometimes…

MeteredOut

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6679097/rbs-confidetial-policy

I doubt you were told the decline was down to confidential policy. The decline will have been down to the way RBS profiled the transaction and their systems flagged it as suspicous.

The reason it was flagged as suspicious is confidential, and you have no right to know what it was.

Staff do sometimes share things they should not though. I had an money transfer flagged this week and had to phone to confirm it should go ahead. I was told it was due to me updating my mobile number on my account. In fact, I had recently removed an old landline number from my account, but the same form also had my mobile number on it, and asked for me to verify it before it could remove my landline.

Gers

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82095438#Comment_82095438

I can assure you that that is exactly what I was told by the agent!

MeteredOut

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82095508#Comment_82095508

They meant that payment decline reasons are confidential, so company policy prevents them from sharing details. You may have been probably speaking to a new or poorly trained agent who didn't explain it clearly to you.

flaneurs_lobster

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82095508#Comment_82095508

It's just words being mangled.

RBS have a set of rules to decide whether to stop a transaction.

These rules are confidential.

The transaction was stopped because of a confidential set of rules (or 'policy' if you prefer).

Woodstok2000

Imagine a scenario where fraudsters could phone banks when transactions were declined to find out exactly what to tweak to enable future frauds.

confederated

It is annoying when this happens, and is a good reason for building a relationship with a bank rather than chopping and changing all the while.

Gers

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82095557#Comment_82095557

Had this account for many years. It was embarrassing, even showed the receptionist that I had enough monies to cover the cost - and I'm glad that I was able to pay using a different bank.

confederated

Yes, when I had to pay a rather large dental bill all my credit cards were declined - I tried three. Fortunately I was able to transfer the funds from my savings account to my RBS account and pay with a debit card - which was accepted. It's all rather embarrassing though, isn't it! It's not like you can make payments to the dentist more regularly. I upgrade my phone each year and Capital One always blocked the payment. I phoned them to say this happens every year so it's hardly an unusual payment. They said they couldn't do anything about it and any payment can fall foul of their fraud algorithms. I changed the card I used and it has been accepted without issue in subsequent years.

Section62

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82095557#Comment_82095557

A 'relationship' with a bank makes no difference if the algorithm decides your payment looks dodgy. Equally that relationship will make no difference in getting them to reveal the specifics of what happened.