Monzo warning me that HSBC is a scam 😄

[christiaanb (Christiaan)]

I’m getting this message when I try to make a payment to HSBC Credit Card (sortcode: 40 42 46, account: 09003649). I presume this is an error at Monzo’s end?

[HoldenCarver (Nick)]

I’d remove the account details from your post.

This is the new Confirmation of Payee flow. You’re getting the warning because something about the details you’ve put in isn’t quite verifying properly.

The flow should’ve asked if you’re paying a person or a company, and the name of who you’re paying, as I recall. Was it your own credit card bill you were paying?

[christiaanb (Christiaan)]

The payment details are public. It’s a central account that you make credit card payments too. Got them from the back of my credit card statement:

[christiaanb (Christiaan)]

@HoldenCarver

The flow should’ve asked if you’re paying a person or a company, and the name of who you’re paying, as I recall. Was it your own credit card bill you were paying?

Yes it was my credit card but it’s a central clearing account.

Triple-checked numbers. I tried both “Personal” and “Business”. And I tried “HSBC” and “HSBC Credit Card”. All of which gave me the same warning.

[christiaanb (Christiaan)]

@michaelw90

Yea, it’ll be confirmation of payee – basically they check that the name on the account etc matches who you’re paying + things.

Do you mean I need to put my name (as it’s my credit card I want to pay), despite it being a central clearing account?

Or perhaps, looking at the bank statement details again, I need to use “HSBC Bank Credit Card”?

[HoldenCarver (Nick)]

Ahh, in that case you should be able to touch ‘continue payment’ if you’re confident the details are correct. And drop Monzo a message through the in-app support option to see if they can improve the flow at all. I think the fact it’s a central clearing account might be complicating matters - I would’ve tried “HSBC” myself, as you did.

(And apologies for the abundance of caution over the account details, that was kind of with my automatic ‘better safe’ hat on )

[jmarcjones (Jonathan Jones)]

The account details he posted are HSBCs details not his and are available by googling for them… the personal info added to make sure payment goes to right place would be his long card number which he hasn’t included

[don_quixote]

Reach out to Monzo chat and they might be able to see the expected name

[CraigW (Craig Wilson)]

Why does Monzo not have a list of common businesses/credit cards/utility company bank details in their payment back-end, so this kinda thing would get recognised instantly as a bill payment?

[tbutz (🏳️‍🌈 Producer of "low value commentary")]

Because it would then have to be maintained. You can’t expect Monzo to maintain such a thing.

Ideally the credit card companies and utility companies etc would all collaborate on keeping such a list maintained themselves, so any changes would be reflected etc., and Monzo could then download the file every month (like companies have to do with the sort codes), but it’s not something Monzo should be doing.

[arthur-ceccotti]

This is actually a brand new flow. It’s designed to stop people from falling for scams. Tightly coupled with the confirmation of payee.

If you think it’s a false positive, I suggest going over the chat to flag it.
You can always proceed with the payment by the way

[christiaanb (Christiaan)]

@jmarcjones

The account details he posted are HSBCs details not his and are available by googling for them… the personal info added to make sure payment goes to right place would be his long card number which he hasn’t included

I did include that when I tried to make the payment.

[christiaanb (Christiaan)]

@arthur-ceccotti

If you think it’s a false positive, I suggest going over the chat to flag it.
You can always proceed with the payment by the way

Thanks, I would have done that but I can no longer see the Chat help in my app. Why would that be?

[redshift]

This is the screen when CoP is unavailable or not able to check, if anyone’s interested.

[gt94sss2]

@tbutz

Because it would then have to be maintained. You can’t expect Monzo to maintain such a thing.

Every other bank I have used does maintain such a list…

[gt94sss2]

@christiaanb

Thanks, I would have done that but I can no longer see the Chat help in my app. Why would that be?

They have made the option harder to find so that less customers contact Monzo.

Complaint stolen card

This is not an A/B test, we’re just rolling it out slowly because this is a large change. We are moving from chat to self-serve for the majority of cases (some will always require you to talk to a human because the case is too complex for a form), not testing the two at once. At the scale Monzo is now, if we turned anything on to 100% of users at once and it caused errors, we would risk causing large scale impact and support overload. As a result, we tend to start with a small launch and incre…

[Feathers (MikeF)]

Just been through this with a card payment. Ignored it and carried on.

At least I was allowed to ignore it and carry on - it seems that other banks may not be so accommodating. An elderly neighbour trying to pay us for her shopping had a terrible time trying to get just the right payee wording for our account in order to transfer the payment. It seemed that she couldn’t proceed any other way.

[nathanthomson8 (Nathan)]

I also got this yesterday…

Could this be done to credit card payments being slightly different?

[gt94sss2]

@Feathers

At least I was allowed to ignore it and carry on - it seems that other banks may not be so accommodating

I believe the ability to override CoP is built into the system by design so the option will have been there even if your neighbour didn’t notice it.

[HoldenCarver (Nick)]

I had to help a relative yesterday, and while I don’t know what bank the neighbour was using in the other example, the one I was faced with had huge warnings in big letters, an override button at the bottom to continue the transaction anyway - and also a checkbox that needed to be ticked to confirm that you understand the risks.

If the same or similar, it could be the neighbour missed the override hidden at the bottom due to not scrolling down enough. Or they did scroll down and see that, but missed the checkbox higher up.

Based on that experience, it would seem banks are adding a significant amount of friction to COP, presumably so that if users override it and it does go wrong, they can say “Look, we gave you plenty of warnings” and refuse to pay out any compensation.