New Laws on bank payment/transfers

I am astounded that Banking standards have slipped so badly…

Names aren’t checked on credit card payments either.

The problem is that there are so many ways to write someone’s name

Eg all of the following could refer to the same person:

Fred Smith
Mr Frederick Smith
Dr Fred Smith
F. G. Smith
The Very Reverend Frederick George Smith DDiv

Then throw in foreign names and honorifics and it gets quite complicated.

So, up to press, the banks have ignored the whole torrid issue and not actually checked the name.

2 Likes

We operate genuine BACS payment for thousands of people every week from work and name checking would cause nightmares of people either not getting paid or delays to payments. I hope this is not introduced to this form of payment.

Person to Person payments I have no problem with this being implemented - just beware of the delays that this may bring.

1 Like

:relaxed::relaxed::relaxed: I belong to a different Age… at 16 I joined Barclays which was (in those days) a well-respected Bank.

In those days… the Chief Clerk would personally peruse and verify every signature… from the bundles of cheques/drafts etc that arrived each morning…before they would be debited to the correct account…

Likewise every Credit Transfer was checked and double checked…

Makes me sound a million years old… but in those days there was no margin of error. Everything was checked and double checked…no matter how long it took.

However, since major automation and modernisation etc… things have improved… or have they…??

More recently a colleague in a large bank… told me that a margin of error of £1000 per week was acceptable on each of the Tills :roll_eyes: :zipper_mouth_face:

'Nuff said…

2 Likes

Were you using an abacus?

2 Likes

Ha ha… I could add a page of figures in my head… a doddle… :relaxed:

My Great-Uncle lived and worked in Hong Kong…a double lifetime ago… and yes, he did use an abacus… it was magical to watch… :relaxed:

1 Like

I was talking to a retired banking friend last week and he was explaining the amazingly long drawn out and inefficient system that cheques went through during clearing when he first started. It was the same day that I had transferred money between accounts in the UK, transferred it via TransferWise and seen it credited in France, all within a few hours.

2 Likes

Ha ha David… we all see things from different angles. I prefer the figures to add up correctly… and for the cheques and credits to go to the correct accounts… no fiddling, no swindling…

There was no need for a Law to make it so… in the olden days… but there is obviously a need for the Law now :relaxed::zipper_mouth_face:

My first name is not Teresa, this didn’t matter until about 20 years ago. Now every time my mum or dad send a Christmas or birthday cheque with Teresa as my name I get grilled by the cashier and told it may be rejected. Hasn’t been yet.
It’s a waste of time telling them that an 87 year old is not going to start writing a different name after all these years.
The really annoying bit is they have both my forenames on my bank account and there is no reason that I can’t use my middle name.

Back in the mists of time… such a thing would have been noted on your account data card and, thereafter, it would have become the norm…

As more and more branches close, it is more than just the personal contact we are losing… sometimes common-sense gets lost in the machine… :relaxed::thinking:

1 Like

Back in the 80s when we paid all our workers in cash, we would ring the bank, which by the way was Barclays the day before to tell them how much we needed to collect the next day ready to go in the wage packets.
On this one particular day we fetched the cash and put it in the safe ready to be counted out later, we never checked it.
About a few hours later we got a phone call from Barclays to ask us if we had checked the amount in the bag of which we said no, they asked us if we could please check it because they were £5000 pounds short on the days audit, on checking, yes you guessed it, that amount was in the bag.
Myself and my business partner looked at each other and said wow what are we going to do because that was a awful lot of money back then.
It was not an hard desision back then to say yes you have given us to much, would we be so honest this day and age , don’t think so.

1 Like

I think you would be honest. And anyway cctv would probably show a cashier putting the wrong money in.
If it’s not yours then it must belong to someone else. A bank is made up of money from many individuals and although the banks have not behaved well I still think honesty is the best policy.

Well done you… :hugs:

The cash audit trail, for preparing wages, would doubtless have led to your door, if the normal ticks and balances had been followed… so, while they asked you to check… they would probably have known… :wink:

But knowing and proving … mmmm… they would have been holding their breath while waiting for your reply.

1 Like

Yes you could be right but I do not have the same respect for them like I used to have in those days.

1 Like

I nearly “lost it” a few years ago…when Barclays blithely told me that they would not notice whether a cheque which needed to be signed by 2 signatories… was, in fact, only signed by 1 signatory… it would be accepted.

They told me that it was up to me to query with them… any cheque that showed on the statement, if I had not double signed it !!

Needless to say… that totally destroyed my faith in Barclays (and, perhaps unfairly, the banking system in general)…

Stipulating more than one signature on a cheque was/is used as a means of security against fraudulent use of the funds.

In my day … a cheque not bearing sufficient signatures would have been swiftly referred to the Drawer so another signature could be obtained… or else it would be returned Unpaid “another signature required” :zipper_mouth_face:

In the 1950’s there were 50million people in the UK, today there are 61 million. In 1950’s you used cash for daily living, today you use your bank card for 50p. There has been an exponential explosion of banking transactions. The world changes and we need to adapt. Trying to maintain antiquated systems in the face of modern pressures strikes me as rather pointless.

I’m not talking about the 50’s… :wink::thinking::relaxed::relaxed: I’m not that ancient…

It certainly makes sense to use a system (manual or mechanical) that is accurate… :roll_eyes::relaxed:

But, I cannot see the sense in using a “modern” system that delivers less than its predecessor…

As in so many situations… people are being ousted by machines… and that is not necessarily for the better…

1 Like

My husband picked up my cheque book by mistake a few years ago and wrote a cheque and signed it. It went through and was only when I wanted to use my chq book a few weeks later that we realised the mistake. Luckily I had the funds, I wonder who would have been in the wrong if I hadn’t, my husband, the bank or both.

The Bank “should” accept responsibility for debiting an account with a cheque signed by someone other than the correct person.

But, you would have to complain to them… and they would have to put it right… although they would wriggle, and try to put the blame on you for allowing your husband/someone else to get hold of your cheque book…and presumably he used it for your mutual benefit… ??? wriggle, wriggle…

If a cheque book is lost/stolen, the onus is on the account holder to notify the bank immediately. Delay can cause all sorts of problems…

The Banks have a lot of small print in their Terms and Conditions…which folk don’t worry about until the what’s it hits the fan…

Once a month my wife has to sign a sheaf of cheques, sometimes 30, sometimes heading towards 3 figures. Invariably her bank then call her office several times querying a cheque - which could be for a figure as low as a couple of pounds, and sometimes lower - and pointing out the signature is not the same as the master one they hold.

Pointing out that after you’ve signed 53 cheques, one after another, during a busy day it is inevitable there are discrepancies, sometimes satisfies them, sometimes not