2013-04-14

Yes, & is a BACS character

BACS allows some specific characters in the coding of BACS transactions, used for payer name, beneficiary reference, etc. It is A-Z, 0-9, . (dot), - (hyphen), / (slash), space, and & (ampersand).

The catch is that & is special in HTML. So needs escaping, obviously.

So I sent a 1p payment to a customer for fun. I sent from AA&REG

This is what he saw:-


Naughty Bank of Scotland.

Oddly, on the CSV download this is "AA AND REG" which is even stranger.

FYI Barclays seemed to escape stuff properly.

Banks still have a lot to learn!
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4 comments:

  1. Tony HoyleSunday, 14 April 2013 at 18:25:00 BST

    I'd be tempted to try a couple of SQL statements just in case :p

    (then run away very fast if it worked)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Andrew MurphySunday, 14 April 2013 at 19:59:00 BST

    What about some Unicode characters?

    ReplyDelete
  3. james kilbyThursday, 18 April 2013 at 09:44:00 BST

    Can you name your Account Little Bobbie Tables http://xkcd.com/327/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. RevKThursday, 18 April 2013 at 09:45:00 BST

      Sadly there are very few characters, not even a # that could be used to make a unicode reference. So no.

      Delete

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