Companies bad at banking

I was discussing with a colleague the other day how so many companies are so bad with banking.

In some ways we have been lucky, but to be fair we have worked at it and made systems that work.

Your payment will not appear for 3 to 5 working days

I see this a lot when paying people - we live in a world of "fast payments", at least in the UK, and if I (personally) pay someone they will have the money within seconds. I mean technically the process can take longer, but in practice it does not.

I had some issue with a loan company for one of my kids, a settlement amount paid by fast payment and they still considered it several days later and extra interest. I was very much on their case from technical and legal points of view until they caved.

So what the hell are companies doing?

If someone pays A&A via normal UK fast payment, we have the money, and, in literally seconds, they get an emailed statement showing their account with the payment received. This is all thanks to Monzo web hooks. I am impressed with Monzo handling this well.

But even without that, there are ways to pull from Open Banking, allowing a payment to show on the banking day it arrives, but polled. Even if only polled once a day a company can see they are paid that day. Poll a couple of times and see money as it comes in during the day. It is not hard! It works for all banks.

Your refund will be in 5 to 10 working days

This is slightly harder, in some ways, as sending money generally needs more business controls.

We do BACS direct credits meaning we can send money on 2 working days if needed, and automate it all with direct submission to BACS.

In special circumstances we can do manual fast payments, but to be honest that is rarely needed from a business point of view. One day we may have that sorted too with the BACS system. But obviously such systems need careful business processes in place to avoid errors (either bugs or errors by staff).

Indeed, we automate refunds up to certain levels with two day BACS as a matter of course. But they have limits and above those I am involved (as director) confirming them.

But so many companies are so bad at this, sending cheques (wow) or "refunding DD payments". When Bulb sent me money it was dozens of payments that were each the amount of a previous DD.

Banking should be simple

I wish Open Banking had given companies and individuals control of their own bank accounts properly. They could do it all and all be like A&A. There are some companies offering this indirectly but why is Open Banking not something that is available to the account holder as standard - that would make sense.

Account switching (Barclays to Monzo)

As you almost certainly know, there is an "account switching service" which UK banks use. I had never used it before.

TL;DR: Switching works, but it seems Barclays "mess about" for a whole day, losing details of payments and even losing credits down the cracks - yes, money just going missing!!!

Why have I not used it before? well, I have accounts with several banks, and there is really no reason to close an "old" account at any point, especially given the hassle it is to open most bank accounts (Monzo and Starling being obvious exceptions). So why would I "switch"? I can simply start using a new account for some things, simples. I appreciate that some people can't do that quite as easily.

The switching does several things - moving over your Direct Debits, and Standing Orders, transferring the old balance over, and closing the old account. Importantly any credits to the old account are forwarded to the new account.

I was interested in the mechanics of the process. I know from dealing with BACS and Direct Debits that there is a method to advise when an account has changed. As a Direct Debit originator we get told if someone changes their bank account and we are required to update the Direct Debit details. We also get told if we send money to a closed account that we used the wrong details (the money is forwarded).

I would hope there is a process for Fast Payments in the same way...

So here goes...

Setting it up (on Monzo)

Monzo make it easy - they have a button with a simple step by step guide. But there is a snag - the step by step instructions say you need last 5 digits of a debit card on the account. Hmm, the account in question did not have a debit card, so I had to order one from Barclays and wait for it to arrive. However, when I then continued with the process it DOES NOT ask for the card digits because I was moving a business account not a domestic one. I have fed back to Monzo.

I had to confirm the Barclays account, name, and address, and agree some terms, and that was it. Simple. It is then set for 8 days later.

Notifications

Monzo immediately did an in app notice saying it was started, a couple of days later another saying they had confirmation from Barclays, and then on the day a notice saying it was done.

Barclays posted a letter saying I was transferring.

All very slick.

On the day

I was curious as to the timing. Banks (traditional banks) tend to work on banking days. So I expected that it would be everything on 13th (the day before) would be normal, then everything dated 14th would be on new account, with closing balance on 13th being the amount transferred to my new account. To my surprise that was not quite the case.

Barclays were a bit odd, they said they would send printed statements, but that if I had another account and continued access to on-line banking that I would be able to see on there and that they would not send a statement. On the 13th they charged me for sending statements (not checked at office if they did). This was slightly devious as I had cleared the account to £0.00. This unexpected charge would make it overdrawn if I had not checked, and break the switch somehow.

07:09 I sent a £1 fast payment from a Lloyds account to the Barclays account. It arrived as normal, showed on the Barclays on-line banking. So I transferred out leaving £0.00 still. So the switch had not happened yet.

09:00 Monzo popped up and said switch done. So I checked Barclays, and account no longer showing. Seems the switch happens at 9am. Would have been good to know to be honest. It was lucky I had downloaded the CSV for previous day from Barclays before 9am, as I could not after 9am.

10:08 I sent another £1 fast payment. It went, and vanished!

15:34 I get a transfer to Monzo, not with the details of the fast payment I sent, but cryptically BFA ACC SWITCH GLOS reference  RESIDUAL BALANCE from account 20-33-83 88010803...

So I assume Barclays idea of when the switch was done, is not quite the same...

16:41 I send another £1, and to my surprise it is not immediately sent to Monzo. It has vanished!

Also, to my surprise, the Fast Payment process has not updated the payee details. Does it lack the simple "wrong account" logic that exists in BACS? That would be really silly, surely? I suppose, as a stretch, the BACS AWACS system is used to update, and so will happen in a day or two.

I emailed my Barclays account manager, and she said "it takes a day to switch" and that it will be all OK tomorrow... Hmm...

Next day

Still no sign of the missing £1.

A download CSV all accounts download from Barclays DOES NOT INCLUDE the old account, so I don't have the transaction on the day of transfer - that is a tad annoying!

08:52 I sent £1.15 from Lloyds to Barclays, and ka-ching, Monzo showed the payment instantly. Monzo shows correct sender sort code and account (i.e. not the Barclays one) and the correct reference. This is working nicely.

The bank details on my Lloyds account have not updated. So looks like fast payment does not have a "push back" to advise the new details. Maybe it uses BACS AWAS, in which case it will be a day or two, so I'll check.

The day after

I checked my Lloyds account, and now the details shown have magically changed to the new account. I assume this was BACS AWACS, but it works. Yay!

Issues

• It is unclear why Barclays "mess about" for a whole day - surely they could simply set a time, such as 9am, transfer the balance at that time, and relay all payments after that time. It is messy.
• Whilst a payment in the morning did arrive later as a "residual balance" there are no details. I assume if I had several payments in the morning I would not have seen any details of them, or even how many payments, just a balance. That is crazy. It is fortunate we already had most customers using the new account.
• The payment in the afternoon is missing still! I will wait and see if it turns up. Of course, customers could have also paid us in the afternoon and also be missing. Very worrying!
• Of course, I could only download CSVs of my Barclays accounts to the day before, and only because I checked before 9am, so no way to get a CSV of transactions on the day of the switch - also crazy.

My account manager at Barclays says it is the same for all banks - which I doubt. Has anyone else done a bank switch and can they confirm if they have the same fiasco for transactions on the day?

I'll update if I hear any more of the missing £1. I half expected it to arrive 15:30 on 15th, but no, it had just vanished in to thin air. Scary stuff.

Update: After 2 days of nagging my account manager, they say they have found the £1 and sent it to me. However, it has not turned up, even allowing for 2 day BACS (why would they do that anyway), so still chasing. Worrying.

Update: After more chasing, 15:34, 3 days later, they fast payment me the missing £1. Finally.

Beyond credit cards - is this a way forward?

We all buy things on-line all the time, and use credit or debit cards to pay on web sites all of the time. As a company we have taken cards with orders in the past, but now most of our business is ongoing services paid by Direct Debit.

Recently we changed the main account to which customers can send payment (when not paying by Direct Debit) to Monzo Bank. The reason, as I explained in my blog post, was that we get instant web hooks for incoming fast payments. I suspect this may be possible with some other banks, perhaps with OpenBanking, and that is something we do want to investigate, but it works well with Monzo.

Apart from allowing incoming payments to instantly be assigned to customer accounts, allowing sales and accounts staff to see the money and ship goods, place orders, or remove restrictions on an account, we also introduced a new feature for deposits with orders.

The idea was to take money by bank transfer as part of an order. This helps avoid some fraudulent orders, and means we have money up front. It also means we have bank details to validate correct Direct Debit instructions.

This was rather experimental - we had no idea how customers would react. We know people are familiar with a credit or debit card with an order, but sending money by bank transfer is not something that is at all common. We made it totally optional, but obviously having had payment with order it means we can progress orders a lot more quickly. Sales staff can immediately ship goods without waiting for our accounts department to check credit or get a deposit.

Over time we have gradually added to more and more types of orders and for lower amounts, and even for existing customers if they do not have a direct debit set up or working. In some cases we only ask for £1 or £2 deposit even, in others it is the whole cost of equipment being supplied.

To my utter surprise it is hugely popular - we have now handled many tens of thousands of pounds in this way. I recall only one case of someone specifically declining to pay a deposit with order so far, and I am frankly gobsmacked, this is excellent!

As a merchant

As a merchant this is a lot easier than taking credit or debit cards.

• No card processing fees.
• No delay receiving payment.
• No PCI DSS hassle (yes, obviously we comply with GDPR and have a privacy policy).
• No risk of a chargeback - it is just like cash.
• Allows us to validate Direct Debit details for on-going services, reducing mistakes and fraud.
• No choosing which cards to take or not take as any UK bank can send faster payments.
• No joke, scam, or fraudulent orders as they don't seem to want to send money up front.
• No real minimum, though some banks seem to dislike smaller than £1 (card fees often make small purchases by card less cost effective).

Overall it is a stupidly good deal for us - we get payment just like cash but don't even have the hassle or cost of handling cash! We can automate a lot of things, unlike cash.

As a customer

As a customer, are there advantages? Are there disadvantages? As we say, for a start, we make it optional (except in one case where we do see fraud with a particular VoIP service), but people do love it, which is great news.

• Faster order processing, we have the money so we can go ahead with the order, often automatically (so for VoIP, and L2TP these can be working in seconds any time of day or night, and for broadband the order for lines/circuits are even sent automatically).
• The UK banking system's "Confirmation of Payee" process means that the customer knows they are paying us, by name, and so they know who has their money (very often unclear when paying by card).
• If an order does not go ahead, or any other reason for refund, it can be instant, unlike (mostly) with card payments - though it does depend on us sending it back (which we do).
• If we refund, that is final - unlike cases I am now seeing where a card chargeback is now being disputed by the merchant months later, and I don't know for sure if my chargeback is "safe" yet.
• The lack of fees helps keep prices low.
• No need for address match - if wanting to send to a friend you can, as you have paid, just like cash.

Of course there are some disadvantages. With a card, a chargeback is possible, and it is also possible with a credit card for some amounts to hold the card company liable for failure. Obviously this also only works if you have the money and don't need credit from a card.

I really think there are businesses that could operate entirely like this without the need to take credit or debit cards at all. For small companies, especially struggling to recover after COVID-19, this could be extremely useful.

Teething problems?

Obviously the process was not without some issues, but we have it quite slick now. Most issues are around people who simply cannot type a correct payment reference.

• Monzo very quickly fixed a Confirmation of Payee issue with our company name, and are working on the missing ampersand at present.
• We created a system to allocate a payment reference (account number on our system) without customer details yet, and ensure that did not then change later for future payments.
• We created a system so that the ordering process can check for incoming payments on such an account number cleanly and get bank details for setting up Direct Debit.
• We created a system to refund (by BACS at present) any deposit if the order does not complete. Hopefully in future we'll have a faster payment means to refund, and I can do it manually (as I have been).
• We had to decide how much money to charge - if just a deposit for good will and Direct Debit details, or if paying the total up front. We fine tuned how much we ask in each case over some months depending on the type of service, the risk to us, the goods being supplied, etc.
• We decided to make the up front payment whole pounds to try and avoid typing errors, and this has worked well - we are selling ongoing services so any balance of pence just ends up part of the first Direct Debit. This will obviously not be the case when just selling goods (which we plan to do also).
• We discovered just how bad people are at typing a payment reference correctly - it is a real shame that the Confirmation of Payee system does not allow us to send a regex for the reference! However, when a payment is wrong, we can easily immediately return it with "Wrong reference". This worked well and for once customer they resent with the right reference, all during the order process!
• The real time payments, and the payer name and bank details, also help allow us to easily tie up a payment with an order if a customer does make mistakes. We allow the customer to say carry on without deposit and flag that they had issues with the order. That has worked well for those few cases.
• We have introduced a checksum system that makes it easier to ensure a wrong payment does not simply go to someone else's account (easy to spot, but more of a nuisance as we email that customer confirming payment). Sadly we do not yet have a means to instantly automatically return such payments, but one day we will I am sure.
• Not really for new customer orders, but we have added a system to automatically email a statement to any existing customer paying - we also set a system to cancel any pending Direct Debits that are possible when applying the new payment. We even set the system to automatically remove restrictions on service automatically once payment arrives. Customers have used this to pay by bank transfer instead, and the system is totally automatic now!

Barcodes?

I have suggested before that we need barcodes for this, and someone has pointed to a draft RFC (here).

This is similar to what I proposed in 2017. If it actually becomes an RFC that may be a good start to people actually understanding them. We just need banking apps to start handling payto: URLs and things will be a lot simpler.

Case study: Payments and trust (Monzo)

Credit (and debit) cards are immensely useful, and I am even more appreciative of them after the fiasco with a holiday refund. Amex were great.

But there is always a balance of trust with customer and supplier, and a range of ways to manage that. Cards provide a good means to handle suppliers that fail. Direct Debits also offer some high level of bias towards the customer, which is very important because of how easy it is to collect payments. This ability to claim for a mistake helps ensure Direct Debits are rarely used for fraud.

For the most part, whichever type of payment is used, where supplier and customer are both honest, all goes well. Sadly when one or the other is not so honest, or even something unexpected, like a global pandemic, happens, the way you pay for things matters.

But some times, as a supplier, you want a reliable payment that you know cannot be clawed back or reversed. This is, of course, a huge bias towards the supplier, and away from the customer, but it is also rather "traditional" in that cash payment was always irreversible.

Bank transfers via BACS, or fast payments, provide this - they are like cash, and generally impossible to reverse as the person paying. Obviously the person paid can send money back if they want. They do create an audit trail, you know where the money went (unlike cash), which helps with any possible fraud.

As a business we do a lot with Direct Debits. This puts a lot of control in the hands of the customer who can make a DD guarantee claim at any time, and we would have to reimburse the bank. Thankfully this is rare, but it does allow some opportunity for fraud by a rogue customer using someone else's bank details. This is one reason why suppliers are expected to check the bank details of new DD instructions where they can. That is not so easy.

Thankfully Monzo have opened up an interesting new option for us - a deposit by fast payment!

We have started asking for a deposit, for new accounts, optionally, for some services (VoIP and L2TP). Just £10 paid by bank transfer as part of the order process. We see it instantly, and it provides the bank details for setting up the Direct Debit for on-going payment.

We have even set it up so that we will automatically send the money back in a few days if the order does not go through.

Whilst we face very little fraud, we have found some services, like VoIP, have had issues. Providing the service instantly, even in the middle of the night, means that false/fraudulent details do not show up for a couple of days, or much longer. Until now we have actually blocked some types of out-of-hours VoIP orders because of this, which is not ideal.

Taking payment by card would be an option, but that too is rather biased to the card holder, and does not allow us to validate bank details for Direct Debit. We have had cases of card fraud too.

The deposit is optional, but we are making it so that the order can go ahead instantly if you make a deposit. At the end of the day this is not about the £10, it is that a scammer will not want to send any money. If it is their account, those account details can go to the police if there is fraud. They are creating much more of a paper trail by sending money. Of course if they have compromised someone else's account they can send a deposit, but I am sure they have more interesting things they can send money towards than our services in such cases. I hope so.

This means we have opened up the VoIP ordering at any time of day if you pay a small deposit. Ongoing payments are then by Direct Debit, which give the customer a lot of control if we do anything wrong, but we are able to ensure we have the right bank details that match the deposit. It seems to me to be a good trade off - the trust/risk is biased to us for first £10 and then to customer ongoing by Direct Debit.

We have been running it for a few days, and in spite of it very clearly being optional, so far, every new customer has chosen to pay a deposit - which is really great news. Apart from one test we ran to ensure we do auto-refund, nobody has given up on an order after paying a deposit, either.

It is a very different approach to taking credit cards, which is so common these days, and I think it is working well. And it is all down to Monzo providing the instant feedback for us via a web hook for the incoming payment.

If someone does not want to pay a deposit, that is fine, but it means accounts staff checking the order during office hours, and adds a small delay. So it is a choice people can make if they want, either way.

I am really pleased that Monzo have meant this is now possible. It is a shame the major existing banks did not think it worth while providing this level of control and information to their customers really. Well done Monzo!

P.S. Sales pitch - if you are a business and need this type of integration, we know people that can help you (some A&A customers we work with).

Monzo Business Account

Finally, Monzo have launched a business account.

I have taken the step of moving the incoming payments account for customers paying us (AAISP) to Monzo. This means we have updated the account details people see on invoices and statements and on the web site, and we are working on a "redirect" for the old Barclays account.

This is not a decision I have taken lightly. We rely on people paying us money, but thankfully a lot of that is via Direct Debit (for which we use Lloyds). But quite a lot of money comes in via bank transfers to us. I appreciate people prefer this than Direct Debit in many cases as I know a lot of companies are nowhere near as pedantic in following the Direct Debit rules as we are.

Up until now, payments arrive at Barclays and we can download a statement. At various points in the past I have managed to screen scrape that on Barclays, but that is not ideal and for a couple of years it has meant I log in every day, even when on a cruise ship in the Pacific! Either way, all we get is a CSV file up to the end of the previous day.

We can then load that in to the accounts to record who has paid us, and how much.

Fraud

It is always a concern advising customers of new bank details as this is the way a lot of frauds work. So we are asking customers to check our web site to confirm details, as well as digitally signed invoices and statements. https://www.aa.net.uk/legal/bacs-payments/

Also, of course, now it is all real time, customers can easily sent say £1 deposit and see on their on-line account at A&A that it has arrived. This is very sensible, and thanks to the customers doing this to be sure.

Real time

Changing to Monzo for incoming payments is a huge difference. We have a simple means to have web hooks which means Monzo send us a secure post of the details of the transaction as it happens.

And I mean real time here - before the sender has seen on their mobile or web banking app even that the payment has gone, we know we have the money! It is impressive.

This is also very robust, retrying if we don't answer, and we can reload all transactions if we need. They have a unique reference on each transaction too, unlike Barclays where no unique reference meant it was tricky if someone paid the same amount twice on the same day.

Barclays even have a limit on how many transactions are in the statement, which meant that at one point it was impossible to download the previous days transactions. When that happened we set up two accounts for people paying us to keep the daily total below the limit. Crazy. Direct Debit solved that, but it shows how behind the times banks are. As far as I know, that limit (I think 300, off the top of my head) still applies.

Moving to Monzo makes a big difference for our accounts staff as it mean they can see people have paid in real time. This avoids delay sending equipment and any delay enabling, or re-enabling, a service that has been suspended.

Payer details

We also get proper payer details, notably sender sort code and account number. This means that when people forget to put the right reference on the payment we can often find the account based on their bank details. Remember that when you used a cheque in the past you gave your bank details on the cheque.

This helps with privacy as well, as our accounts staff can be looking at the customer account and not a general "company bank account". Only if the payment does not match anyone do we put it in a suspense account to be allocated.

In those rare cases of a random, unexplained, payment to us, we used to be a tad stuck. We have had money from someone listed as "CURRENT ACCOUNT" before now, and nobody complaining they had paid and we had not seen it. What do you do? Well, now, we can, simply, send back to the sort code and account from which it came, if all else fails. That said, we also get more of the payer name as Fast Payments have longer fields that are not truncated to 18 characters used by BACS (and what Barclays gave us).

Opportunities

The process also allows some opportunities, which we are working on. Some of our services are, sadly, prone to fraudulent orders. We manage these quite well both automatically and with manual checks by our accounts staff, but this means, for example, you cannot order 07 VoIP numbers from us outside some restricted office hours, and there are some services we don't sell on-line yet.

Live incoming payments would allow many of these services to be activated immediately if we get a small deposit by bank fast payment, and also allow us to confirm the details for subsequent Direct Debit.

Obviously we can make this optional - allowing customers that would rather talk to our accounts staff and delay activating a service, to do so. But it would allow people to order services any time, day or night, and have them immediately activated if they are prepared to send a small deposit by on-line banking.

I'm not sure when we will have that in place, but Monzo make it possible.

Tipping the scales

I am getting really good at upgrading the scales to do WiFi now, and read cards. The card of choice is a Monzo card which works perfectly well as an ID for weighing yourself. Notably Amex have an ID of 00000000 which is useless.

Really neat PCB, locking molex connectors, cables, the lot. It is working well. Marsden kindly sent the service manual so I can set to "kg" and "st/lb" modes for those that like old-school weights.

The system has a QR code on the scales, which allows you to register any card against your email address. You then weigh yourself and tap the card on the scales to record the weight.

When you tap the card it beeps to confirm it is working, and keep beeping until a stable weight is recorded over WiFi to the server. Simple UI if ever I made one!

Sadly, I have fried a couple of boards whilst doing these upgrades, but Marsden do spare parts (not cheap) and whilst I have a few clues what I may have done, I am not 100% sure of how I killed them. I think, with care, and anti-static, and being neat (avoiding any shorts, or diodes backwards) I can do this reliably now. Obviously very unofficial so I cannot expect any help from Marsden. They do make very nice scales though.

The next challenge is to make the web site that holds the data have graphs and sharing options and so on. At present it is just a list of weights. But even that is working for relatives using this solution.

This is turning in to the new fat-shamers club or something, not sure.

But what was the first thing on the web site? after registering the domain? well, it was getting an excellent lawyer to put together the privacy policy for us and ensuring we are GDPR compliant.

You have to love any lawyer that covers standing on scales with your pet cat as part of the privacy policy. Thank you Neil.

Pick a card, any card... @monzo a winner

I have blogged a few times on issues with banks, and indeed, only yesterday, had the fun with Barclays wanting me to text a short code after they authorised a card payment.

So I thought it time to give a bit of a review of a couple of cards for personal use, Monzo and Starling, and how my views have changed slightly.

For my non techie friends and relatives - download the Monzo app on your smart phone and follow the instructions to get one now... Just do it!

Summary

I prefer Monzo now, they are a proper bank now, and less hassle. I am recommending Monzo to my friends.

Both Monzo and Starling accounts have a number of key features:-

• Instant set up using a smart phone - you need photo of ID and short video clip and your details, and sorted.
• Both have "account switch" systems to move DDs and payments from another bank, but you don't need to close your existing bank account - nothing stops you having more than one bank!
• The account does all the usual things like direct debits, faster payments, and so on. You can have you salary paid in to them. They are proper bank accounts.
• Both offer overdrafts.
• Both do Apple pay.
• Both do live updates of spending on the phone app.
• Both allow third parties to send money using a debit card! i.e. charge someone's debit card to put money in to your account. That is cool, you can send someone a link to pay you money!
• Both allow API integration with your own systems so you can see transaction details live on your own computer system if you are geeky enough to want that. It is cool for geeks, honest.
• Both allow you to disable and re-enable the card as you wish.
• Both allow separate spending pots / savings pots to partition off your money.

There is not a lot to decide between them, but I have listed some of the key differences I have noted below and why I prefer Monzo now.

I feel they are especially good for anyone living on a budget and wanting to carefully manage their money.

Monzo

I got a Monzo card when it was in beta (my son got one in alpha), and was a pre-payment Mastercard with quite a nice phone app. Back then there was a waiting list even. I used in UK and US and worked well.

It has moved on massively since then. It is a proper bank, and they have neat features like warning you of a Direct Debit the day before, and you have to love the "ka-ching" sound when using the card. They now have Apple pay as well.

Some key advantages to Monzo:-

• The app clearly shows the limits on usage, e.g. daily card usage amounts and so on.
• They have a warning of DD payments the day before.
• They show declined card transactions and the reason why declined, very useful if there is some fraud, or you simply mistyped the expiry date!
• The API (and app) has way more detail including sender bank sort code and account number and showing the proper reference on payments and Direct Debits.
• The "ka-ching" sound effect when you spend money
• Really simple means to send payments between Monzo card holders you know, or near you, and the reference allows lots of text and even emojis, and reaction emojis as well making easy to acknowledge a payment with a smiley face.
• That really bright orange!

Starling

I got a Starling card later than Monzo, and one of the key things that impressed me was the instant set up. At the time Monzo had a waiting list which I am assuming they do not now. Also, not only did I have a working bank account in minutes, with sort code and account number, it was on Apple pay instantly even before I has the card. Next day it popped up offering an overdraft (though I don't use one). The day after the card arrived and it was in very cool packaging!

Whilst Apple pay is a bit gimmicky, I do like it, and use it, so I started using Starling for my day to day spending instead of Monzo. I also asked them about spending limits on the card as the app does not show it and they said there was no limit. With that I decide Starling was the card for me and pretty much stopped using Monzo at all. Indeed, a card that would just work for any amount I had on it, that was going to be my main bank account now. Finally a card that would do what I wonder, or so I thought.

I ran in to a few snags and basically they were not interested in fixing at all. One was that there were no details of sender sort code and account on payments, and another is the Direct Debits do not show the actual payment reference so you cannot relate to a specific DD notice for an individual invoice. Whilst both are minor issues, my concern was their reluctance to do anything or consider either an issue.

Then, recently, I found that they misled me over the spending limit on the card and actually it is £10,000. They also said that fast payments were £10,000 in 24 hours too, so having moved money to Starling to pay something more than £10,000 (only option was a single transaction for full amount as was on a web site) I could not move all the money back to a different account. It then turns out that this was also mis-information and that the £10,000 fast payment limit is per transaction! To this day I don't know if the £10,000 card limit is per transaction or per day...

To my surprise, even days after alerting them to these issues and misinformation a friend contacted me to ask about Starling limits as they too had multiple contradictory statements from Starling about limits, and they wanted to buy a £16,000 car but did not want embarrassment by having the card declined. They too were considering new banks like Starling because of the hassle of traditional banks and their over zealous and often misdirected "fraud protection" systems, and the appalling way you are treated once they are triggered. So it seems Starling have not learned. This is a real shame. Mistakes are one thing, not learning is another.

Now Monzo have Apple pay, I have basically stopped using Starling. Monzo have limits but they say what they are in the app, no ambiguity!

Their only possible saving grace is that Starling do business accounts now (in limited cases), and if that has a sane API (with sender sort code and account as well as full reference) that may be useful.

To be fair, some other features...

• Pay interest on credit balances, which is nice.
• Do some stuff with € it seems.
• It seems foreign cash withdrawals may be better.

Amex

Clearly neither Monzo nor Starling will help with any larger transactions. Monzo is great for day to day spending, but if and when I want to spend more, I cannot trust them to work because of usage limits. Also, I am wary of Barclays or Lloyds or other banks because of the hassle and attitude the second you trip their fraud systems. To be honest the attitude is perhaps the worst part.

So, it seems, the best way forward is an Amex card. They have a reputation for not dicking people about. I hope it is well founded. Early days (1st month) but we will see. So far only hassle is pizza hut don't seem to take Amex. Otherwise no problems at all. I'll blog more on this if/when I really put them to the test but that may be some time. It is almost sad that I am deliberately putting everything I do through Amex to make sure they build up my credit rather than using Monzo.

The good news is they do have an app and it has real time alerts. It is a bit odd, in fact, as the alerts flag up in the Apple Wallet in real time, and the Amex app lags behind by minutes. But the end result is I can see spending in real time just the same Monzo or Starling, which is nice. It also means any fraud can be sorted really quickly.


I hope that has been useful - I appreciate an Amex card is not for everyone - I have a wide range of readers and friends and I know some have used Amex Platinum for years (and have more money than sense, some of them), but some have almost no income and struggle, so it is a tad hard making a blog post that works for that range of people - maybe I have succeeded this time. I know that, thinking back to when I was really broke, a Monzo card would have been perfect.

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...

Monzo current account and fast payments and their API

I thought I'd be less controversial for a change and say I am actually pretty impressed with the API link to a Monzo current account.

Just need a business account from them now. We could build services around instant fast payment to us I am sure.



P.S. I am testing BACS and DDs to see how they work, do I get a ka'ching at midnight or something. BACS is all batch date based, so will be interesting to see.

Leaning to code

I have to say I am slightly impressed and pleased with my son's abilities in coding today.

He has been working on tools to have transaction details from Monzo, specifically to handle money loaned and repaid. I have written a load of C code behind the scenes for him to get the transaction data and run a script of his.

The fact Monzo have an API is great for this, and the real-time nature of the web hooks is even better. They lack an "update" web hook, but all in all it is pretty impressive.

Now, what struck me as insightful is a couple of questions James asked, and importantly he asked before he hit the problem caused by them!!!

1. He realised that if he happens to be set up to track Monzo accounts for both sides (him and his girlfriend), he will see the same transaction twice, and hence record the transaction twice, once from each side. But there are scenarios where he is not tracking both sides and so only sees it once. He needs to de-dup the transactions. I am impressed he realised this, and he has managed to find a reference in the transaction which is the same on both sides (a p2p transaction id). So he can de-dup that. He even worked out that matching by amount and parties and time is a really bad idea to de-dup this stuff.

2. He also realised that he might get the two sides of a transaction concurrently and so code that checks for it existing, and if it does not, goes on to add the transaction, could happen concurrently and add both. This can be solved in many ways from locking around the transaction handling script, to table locks in SQL, to unique keys on tables. But the fact he worked out it was a risk is excellent. So many people do not understand "real time" coding and race conditions, and he spotted this as an issue, and once again did so before it happened.

So, well done, my mini-me is growing up.