At the moment the character limit is 18, which is WAY too short. I just had to setup an important payment and could not follow all the instructions because the reference message I was meant to add simply did not fit in the 18 characters limit, which means I could only put half of the actual message. While this is not the case too often, it is an easy change to make and would avoid any stress or confusions later on.
I had no idea about this, I just checked and you are right. In this case it’s the business asking me to add such a long reference message that I should moan at 
2 Likes
It’s a shame BACS/FPS impose such a short limit - I know I find it overly restrictive fairly regularly.
I guess we should just be grateful that they’ve found a way to get it sending lower case letters these days
My Lloyds account is incapable of displaying lower case letters in references and my NatWest account is incapable of displaying or sending lower case letters in references (they are sent fully capitalised)! 
HSBC is the only traditional bank account I have that can actually show references properly