faster payments not so fast

[drmotorsport]

More of a grumble now that my payment for a new (to me) car has finally gone through; but despite both banks involved websites claiming to support Faster Payments at 2030hrs on a Wednesday, My bank (First Direct) on enquiry said that the sellers Halifax was closed to receiving payments until this morning. Not impressed and somewhat embarrassing having to spend so much time in a strangers house trying to get a useful response from my bank - Would have been quicker to count some good old fashioned cash!

Is this a common issue? Was expecting a fraud check causing the delay, but apparently FD were happy with the security side of things.

[Mashwort]

Halifax batch process into the Faster Payments meaning they hold onto the transaction for hours (sometimes next day) before submitting it into the Faster Payments network with a bunch of other transactions. This defeats the whole point of Faster Payments which should have transactions sent to it near real time for onward processing / settlement. I had an argument with them this week when trying to send an urgent payment out, ended up using CHAPs and got them to waive the fee.

[Sir Bagalot]

FD also told me money was sent (Seller banked with Halifax).

After another couple of calls they finally admitted it was with their fraud team and was pending. We had a discussion and the money was in the sellers account 5 mins later. They also paid me £100 for the delay.

[anonymous-user]

I had this with NatWest.

Made a payment and the fraud team blocked it. This I have no issue with, it's good to trap it if it looks dodgy.
What pissed me off was they can tell me when I've set up a new payee, but they don't tell you when a payment is blocked, and you have to go digging around their website to find the payment hasn't gone through. Then you've got to find who to call etc etc.

Why not just text you to say they've put the payment on hold? They do it for everything else you do on your account so why not for blocking payments?

[red_slr]

I keep saying on threads like this never send anything that's critical in banking after 3pm. Ideally before 1pm.

[227bhp]

You can't really knock increased security. Lloyds announced this week they'll be texting me a code when I use my business card for online purchases (don't know whether some or all) which I'll have to use.