I thought I’d put this out there to see if it’s me just being annoyed for no reason or if it bothers other people, too.
When I make payments to my credit card, I get two really annoying additional steps. The first states:
We couldn’t check this account
…where I tap “Continue anyway” for it to then immediately pop up with…
Could someone be trying to scam you?
…where I then again tap “Continue anyway”. I know this is just two steps, however, when this then takes the overall number of taps to nine, on top of the keying in of the amount to make a single payment, it makes the whole process very frustrating.
I raised this with Monzo a year or so ago, where they did internally raise a complaint and ended up giving me £25 compensation for some reason . The issue is down to the credit card’s account being a “sorting account”, therefore, there isn’t a name on the account to match, thus the potential scam warning.
All I wanted was for the devs to implement either a way to mark a payee as “safe”, or for it to learn that itself, considering I’ve made hundreds of payments to this account already.
You know it’s safe, you’re confident enough to keep pressing to skip forward, but many many people fall for scams every single day.
It’s (probably) once a month, the extra taps if all added up in time, they probably add up to less time in your life ever, than it took you to complain to Monzo/write this thread.
Agree, these days I instinctively tap the confirm button without reading what it even says as I’m assuming it’s a scam warning, one day it might be telling me something else and I just dismiss it entirely. Am sure there is a viable middle-ground somewhere of banks covering their arses and looking out for the consumer, vs being able to trust a payment to a frequent recipient and remembering that most transactions are legit.
And this is probably why it doesn’t actually stop the scams! That and because people don’t actually realise it’s a scam so no warning will do anything anyway.
Most likely, I was just thinking that while I’m sure they have been effective to a degree and prevented some people being scammed, there are still people being scammed even with the warnings, so on top of being annoying for people who aren’t being scammed they’re not even working all the time for people that are.
I do think there needs to be a shift away from the confirmations that just shift the blame to the customer if they’re approved, I just don’t know what a good alternative is. I think people have suggested some sort of hold or delay on the transfer actually being sent until further checks have been made, but then that would be a pain for things like paying for piece of furniture you’ve picked up on Facebook Marketplace. I’m sure there can be exceptions made for things like paying credit cards though, if it’s a repeating payment and the names on the accounts match I can’t imagine there would be much scope for scams there.
Exactly! It really would be a very simple it of logic for the developers to programme in.
I agree with your points in general about the overall process needing much more thought to better protect everyone, as opposed to just passing the book.
I’m glad it’s not just me, then, lol. I should look at other options to make payments. However, I’ve built my own custom web application to auto-reconcile payments based on the Monzo category I assign the payment to at the end of the faster payment. I suppose I could make the payment by another means, and then categorise it in the app afterwards.
As you agreed, though, it really should be something that the devs programmed in, I.E, for it to learn that the payment is safe, especially after hundreds of payments!
I’ll take a look at the other thread you shared, too.
I used to have this problem with capital one, but I tried a few variations of “capital one” and got a partial match which tells you the exact name of the account.
I’ve now updated it so that I’m paying something like Capital One (Europe) PLC and it goes straight through.
Yeah, I tried all of this many times. I even spoke to Santander numerous times and then Monzo, who confirmed it was down to it being a “sorting” account , and that no matter what I entered, it wouldn’t work.
If you’re paying an external credit card (or many other large organisations) HSBC have a “company list” which already contains their bank account details - so all you need to do is choose the payee and enter your reference/card number.
They then store your details for any future payments.
It’s quite frustrating for me too. It’s not just that I have to tap through all those unnecessary warnings every time. It’s not even that this is what trains people not to bother reading them (which as others have pointed out, leads to more fraud getting through). It’s that to me, logically, if I’ve already paid money successfully and without making any kind of fraud claim at least twice in the past, and the account details have not changed, there is absolutely no reason to continue prompting me about potential fraud! Surely it’s a simple thing to add to the code that after one or two payments and X amount of time passed with no fraud claims, stop prompting for payments to the same account.
You would think, yes, although the banks would probably say it’s to protected against some sort of long con (but even then, even if it was that, you wouldn’t know so wouldn’t heed the warnings so they still wouldn’t work).
Ultimately the weakest part in this whole chain, as is usually the case, is the human in the middle. The same as a factory or a train or whatever else can have all kinds of safety processes in place, but accidents still happen if the humans ignore or bypass them. So whatever fraud prevention systems they have in place, as soon as you put a human responsible for one of the steps and you’re relying on them to successfully not push a button, which is essentially what it comes down to, you’re going to increase the chances of it failing. So I think as long as this is the process it’ll lull people into false senses of security and not prevent the fraud either. Elderly people in particular and really anyone under any sort of stress or anxiety can very easily be coerced into believing approving the payment is safe so the more I think about it the more it feels like a very half arsed and lazy approach where a bank can say “well we asked you if you were sure” when surely in 2023 there must be a better way.
Exactly! It’s absolutely infuriating! This is the main gripe I have. At the very least, we should be able to make a payee as “safe”, so that we are accepting liability, making it not prompt on any future payments.
. The issue is down to the credit card’s account being a “sorting account”, therefore, there isn’t a name on the account to match, thus the potential scam warning.
, and that no matter what I entered, it wouldn’t work.