Real banks are shit, but "challenger" banks are more shit, maybe?

[I've added some constructive comments at the end of the blog now]

I have had a lot of issues with Barclays over the years, especially where card payments are declined for no good reason (and where they allow fraudulent ones that are so obvious to anyone that it is fraud, against Barclays, it is unbelievable).

So I am very wary of using Barclays for anything, and hence have Monzo and Starling accounts. Both are great at letting you know what happens in real time on mobile apps and recommended to most of my friends. For most people both work well, but I have to say I would now recommend Monzo.

But, it seems, neither can do the job of a "proper" bank, in my view.

I am booking a cruise with my (rich) friends. As I have blogged before we take turns for holidays, and between us we are doing another cruise. The total comes to more than £10k between us. I'll no doubt post pictures and videos at the time (next month). I know that is a lot of money.

So, paying over £10k on my Barclays card - risky - it could bounce, decline, fail, go wrong in so many ways, and I am wary. As I say, it is a lot of money. To be honest the most likely is they allow the cruise and then block my card without telling me and make my life difficult when I want to buy a coffee.

But I have my shiny new Starling Bank card, and I asked them, back in December, if there are any spending limits using the card. I was advised of top up, and ATM usage limits and told that otherwise there was no limit. I asked at the time as we were sorting a rather expensive car for my son, and wanted to ensure it worked. Sadly Tesla don't take debit cards (WTF?) so was not the issue. Seems it would have been if they did!

I have spent the last 6 months thinking my Starling card had no spending limit, so I decided the safest tactic for this cruise was move the money to Starling, and then pay on card. They declined it! UNLIKE Monzo they do not log or show they declined it on the app. I had to ask on the chat thing. They declined as they have a £10k limit. It seems that previously they LIED TO ME about the limits, or lack thereof.

Now I find they can do nothing to fix this, and I cannot even send the money BACK to my Barclays account to try paying with the Barclays debit card as sending money out has the same limit! Before you ask, yes, I tried to resolve this with them before making a blog post and putting on twitter - had they resolved it, e.g. "I'll temporarily allow a higher level, try now", then I would have been impressed and not cross at all.

This is starting to be show stopping for use of Starling, and I will go back to Monzo for some stuff and Barclays for other. It really seems that these "challenger" banks are just playing around and not "proper" banks at all. Shame.

Anyway, the money, carefully collected together, is held to ransom almost, in my Starling account, and I do not want to lose the cruise booking over this. So I decide, that is OK, I can borrow from my mortgage reserve for a few days. I am not above using my mortgage reserve for a holiday, that is what these things are for. What do I find?, well Barclays have broken the mortgage contract (IMHO) and reduced my reserve with no notice to only £1k available. What the hell? If we manage to get this cruise sorted it will be a miracle. So I'm threatening to sue Barclays now over that...

Seriously, do no "proper" banks exist?

P.S. I could not send the money back to another account (well not all of it) as they stated there was a £10k “in any 24 hours” limit. However, experimenting, you can simply send more than one payment in a row. So yet more misinformation.

What would help is:-

• Clearly stating actual limits in the app like Monzo do,
• Ensuring staff understand and can explain them correctly.
• Allowing customers to change them to suit their spending, ie £10k is way too high for a lot of people who would be happier with a much lower limit
• Allow time limited pre-advice of large payment via app with face/finger security, and password, and PIN or whatever.
• Please have the app show when a card is declined, and the reason, like Monzo do!
• Maybe even a link/button to "enabled this transaction if you would like to try again in next hour" restricting to exact amount and merchant to exceed a limit...

I really am starting to lose my rag with @Barclays

I still do personal and business banking with Barclays, but have several other accounts now "just in case".

Tip: I recommend people have spare accounts and cards, and companies like Monzo and Starling are excellent ways to do this. Put £100 or so in there for safe keeping just in case your own bank screws up.

This may be seen as slightly 1st world problems, but it is just getting so frustrating.

Last week I decided to give all the kids some money for Christmas. Generous dad that I am. They all have shiny new Monzo current accounts so I could simply do a fast payment from my Barclays on-line banking to them.

I take security seriously, and one thing I did was make absolutely sure I had the correct account details. Copy and paste is your friend here. The Monzo app can share bank details over iMessage at the click of a button and no re-typing. I can copy/paste that to set up new payees. I sent £1 to each and confirmed it arrived, and at the right child. I say child, the youngest is 22 this year!

Tip: Send a test payment to new accounts / payees to ensure no typing errors.

Four payments worked, the fifth is blocked! I get a text saying they will send me a text ?!? Then a text saying reply (to a 5 digit code). Sadly, I know my comms are special, but I cannot text a 5 digit code. I was hoping they would call - they have done in the past - with an automation that asks a couple of silly questions using DTMF replies. I could have coped with that. But nothing.

At this point I have 4 kids saying "thanks dad" on the group chat and one saying "WTF? Why not me?". Explaining the bank issue still makes them wonder, I think. So not happy. So I called Barclays.

It took over 70 minutes to sort, and only because I ended up saying "look, either you believe I am me and so approve this, or you don't and I go find a real bank from tomorrow!". So sorted, money transferred, yay! I made him stay on call until I confirmed it had arrived.

Next day, call from anonymous number saying they need to talk to me about the transaction. Well, I spent 70 minutes on the phone to Barclays fraud already, and I told them so. I was not doing it again. So they blocked my on-line banking. WTF? By the way, if you call from an anonymous number, I reserve the right to SHOUT AT YOU! Take note, Barclays. I may even swear.

Thankfully we have quite a good business banking team, and as this meant I could not get to business accounts either, so they sorted it. Very annoying.

So we come to yesterday...

I am planning to make a moderately expensive purchase, on a card. I won't go in to details, but suffice to say I am really confident Barclays would block it. That, in itself, is a sad state of affairs. So a new plan...

I have a Starling Bank account now. They confirm they have no limit on card spending and it would be fine. So I try to transfer the money to Starling. I had previously set up the beneficiary and sent a test payment and checked it was all correct. Same copy/paste trick. The payment comes up saying:-

OK, pain in the arse. Does not say contact fraud team. Does not say much, but does say scheduled for 14th, so good. Just delayed. No text. No call. No message. Nothing.

This morning nothing. No record of the transaction. Not showing as rejected on the tracker. Nothing. So I move the money out of that account and send a message on on-line banking explaining what I had done and asking for an explanation. No reply yet.

Pissed off.

Barclays: You need to show "pending" or "delayed" transactions and a status. It is totally broken for them to not show anywhere on your system! If there was fraud, the real account holder could not see there were pending fraudulent payments and query them. It could also easily lead to people duplicating payments (I have done that in the past when I did not see the "delayed" message). Really, fix this now.

Anyway, what next, well suddenly on-line banking is not working. WTF?

Again, I contacted the business team. I was not amused. The account manager put me on a conference call with the on-line team. They faffed about a lot - even though she validated that she identified me (and that was a lot of faff, for good security reasons) they then wanted to further identify me with pin sentry crap, which I did. The account manager was not amused with that - she had done her job and they messed about for no reason.

They ask about the transaction and if it was genuine? I explain it was, and how annoyed I am that it did not happen. And that they can cancel it now, as I'll transfer by other means (BACS direct submission, takes 2 days but just works). So good, all identified and confirmed.

She says I now have to speak to their fraud team to re-enable on-line banking. WTF?

I just confirmed NO FRAUD, it was not FRAUD. IT WAS ME! So WTF would I have to speak to a fraud team? No, they were not budging. The account manager is still on the call!

At this point I lose my rag (how unlike me?), rattle off how many hundreds of thousands are sat in the business account and say I want that in cash at the branch tomorrow morning. i.e. I have had it with Barclays. I have paid my mortgage off now, and can easily break all ties with Barclays at the drop of a hat if I have to, both myself and the business. The "account switching" stuff means that even those few people paying us (A&A) by BACS will not be inconvenienced if we start banking elsewhere as the payments get redirected.

Surprisingly (ha!) the account manager steps in rather sharpish at that point and suggests that I can hang up and she will sort it all. Well done to her, 10 minutes later, she has.

Who are they protecting?

As you may know I get very frustrated by this crap, and I had this on the call I had with the fraud dept, that they say they are protecting me! They even had the cheek to say "you had a lot of fraud last year". No, Barclays had one big fraud last year accepting a card holder not present, no address check, old, replaced, card number in a foreign auction house without questions, and gave me hassle over it. I had no fraud!

Also, from news stories, if I did have fraud - if someone convinced me to send money to a bogus account, the bank would not protect me. They would say they did what I asked, and tough.

If any of this actually protected me and not the bank I would be a lot happier about it. It does not.

Who are Monzo and Starling?

Monzo and Starling are some new banks. Both are now proper banks, and very similar way of working. Both embrace mobile banking apps as the primary way to interact with customers. Both tie to a card (MasterCard debit) as well. Both allow instant blocking of the card, and use on-line chat from the app to resolve issues. Both seem to work.

Monzo have aimed mainly at consumers, and have only just sorted their full banking licence. Starling seem a tad ahead of the game and have some things Monzo do not. Both have APIs and web hooks. Monzo web hooks seem better so far, as Starling not sending payer account details.

We are looking at a business account with Starling as soon as they start doing them - the payment services API looks good, and do have the data we need. It will allow some new A&A services I am sure.

In some ways I found Starling a tad more slick, but then I started with Monzo when it was just out of alpha, and experimental and not even a full bank yet. So maybe unfair to Monzo. I actually liked the anonymous card from Monzo - they should allow a card with any name on it, or none.

With Starling I got the app from the apple app store, and went through the steps. All very simple and easy. Like Monzo a photo of ID and short video recording. They were slightly slicker in some of that than Monzo, but very close.

Unlike Monzo, at that point, I had an account number and a simple click through to add to Apple Pay. Within minutes of downloading the app I had a working Apple Pay on my phone and even an overdraft limit (which I have no plans to use). That was impressive!

The card arrived today, a couple of days after applying, and even that was slick...

Pull the tab and you get the card...

Very nice. I may have to look in to how they do that for A&A router cards :-)

I have not had a simpler bank account opening since I was a student in a university branch, and in those days the slick thing was handing you a temporary cheque book (un-named) on your new account, on the spot.

I have given the Barclays team the challenge of providing a decent API for inbound fast payments. We'll see. If they do, maybe I stay using them.

Right now, it is really close, and one more stupidity from Barclays and we leave them...

Bloody banks!

As I have previously blogged, I made the mistake of guaranteeing an Amigo loan for someone. My personal opinion is never ever go near Amigo loans, and don't even fall for guaranteeing a loan for someone else.

In the end, we asked Amigo for a settlement figure, and I paid it. My friend is now repaying me. Yes, I know, "I told you so" all round.

Amigo loans

I asked for a "settlement figure" and received one, after a long and very shouty call as I mentioned in a previous blog (sadly not recorded). I got the settlement figure by email dated 19:30 on 2nd October. I logged in to my Barclays on-line banking and paid it in fill. Amigo have now confirmed in writing that the payment was "accepted" as part of the "faster payments" process at 19:37 on 2nd. Yay!

You would think that is the end of the matter, but no.

Firstly, it is clear that Amigo are unable to provide a "settlement figure", as even paying them in full in irrevocable cleared funds in only 7 minutes of getting the figure, it was not, according to them, sufficient to "settle" the account. There was another £10 of interest to pay. I am pretty sure that the whole point of a "settlement figure" (which is what they called it in the email) rather than just an "account balance" is that it is a figure that can "settle" the account. The fact they are unable to actually provide one is a serious issue in my view, and so has been reported to the Financial Conduct Authority.

So why was there interest still to pay? Well, it seems, according to their written reply to me, that they deliberately delay processing payments until the following working day. Well, I paid on the 2nd, but they recording the payment as being paid on the 4th. It seems that "following working day" was a bit of a lie, as it can be the day after that.

Their reason for this? That "payments can be subject to confirmation or be reversed"!

Well, that is true for some types of payment, but waiting one day does not help. Direct Debits can be clawed back at any time, so clearly they have a process for handling payments being reversed - how does delaying things help. However, Faster Payments cannot be reversed (as per FAQ on the faster payments web site), so not actually a valid reason anyway.

My issue though, regardless of how much they delay processing the payment they have received, is that they should record the payment on the account correctly - the correct amount, and surely, the correct date. The date they were paid. I have no issue with them waiting until the 4th to record the payment, but record it as having been paid on the day it was paid, i.e. the 2nd, and so apply any interest on that basis.

To deliberately falsify the record of when a payment was received by at least one working day on every payment, in order to collect more interest, seems to me to be a simple matter of criminal Fraud.

So, reported to Financial Conduct Authority for that as well.

Barclays

Barclays worked well in this case, the faster payment did work, and arrived in seconds. Barclays have a "tracker" page on on-line banking that you can use to check such a payment has been made. They can confirm that it has been "accepted" by the receiving bank. I did this at the time, and saw it was accepted.

However, it was not until nearly two months later that Amigo finally actually sent a statement saying the payment was made at all, and that it was made on the 4th, not the 2nd, and that interest was due. I was fuming, obviously, and wanted evidence that I had paid. I checked Barclays on-line banking and the "tracker" only goes back one month, so I could not get the evidence, damn. All I had was a statement showing the banking day (3rd).

So, simple, there is a secure messing system. I simply asked Barclays if they can confirm when the payment was received. Not a hard question, surely.

Their first reply, after a few days, was that they cannot confirm when it was actually received, but I could use the tracker to check! Well, I explained in the question that the tracker did not go back that far, so they clearly had not in fact read the question at all!

They also suggested I simply ask the recipient, so I pointed out that we had a dispute about when it arrived, which is why I am asking Barclays! My original email did not explain that, so fair enough.

I replied, explaining again that the tracker did not go back that far, and asking if instead they could  confirm when Barclays received the acknowledgement of the payment having been made. Maybe the phrasing of my first question had been unclear.

Finally they come back saying that my account was debited on the 3rd (duh, I can see that on the statement, and not what I asked), and that the recipient would have had it "within or after 24 hours".

Let's think about that...

1. Faster Payments have a process that includes an acknowledgement. Barclays know they have that as they show in their tracker. So either Barclays fail to actually keep records, which would be a surprise, or they are just incompetent and cannot look them up.
2. Faster Payments are normally within seconds, and otherwise up to 2 hours. Why suggest 24 hours?
3. What does "within or after 24 hours" actually mean. It seems to cover the time period from when the payment was sent up to 24 hours later, plus the entire time from 24 hours later to the to the final heat death of the universe. So basically "some point after you sent the payment". The "24 hours" part of the sentence actually adds no meaning whatsoever. You have to wonder if they get training in being vague and meaningless in their replies.

So, now I have a complaint in to Barclays over their handling of a simple enquiry regarding a payment.

Why is this so damn hard?

No, A&A are not going to start a bank, sorry.