Support for payment references over 18 characters

I’ve just encountered an 18 character limit on payment references, however a UK business account I’m attempting to send a payment to is requesting a strict 30 character payment reference for funds to be allocated to my account.

I’m assuming 30 characters is valid and acceptable to the FPS/BACS system, so why is Monzo limiting to 18 characters?

You may want to raise this with that business, as I believe 18 characters is the maximum limit for bacs and faster payments transfers, so it will be the same with other banks too.

5 Likes

Every online reference I can find in a 30 second search (so not a scientific method) says BACS supports a maximum of 18 alpha-numeric characters so I imagine that’s why Monzo has gone with this number.

3 Likes

You’d have thought the company in question would have noticed they only ever get 18 characters in every reference ever….?

And if 30 is essential, every payment to them must be going awry.

2 Likes

whytheneedforsomanycharacters?

This is a perfect 30 character length - I can see why they’d want it :stuck_out_tongue:

2 Likes

ihavelostinterest!

Accepted everywhere.

2 Likes

monzoisthebestbank

18 characters. I think I’ve found my useless talent :laughing:

Omgwhatareyoudoing

1 Like

thinkofthechildren

2 Likes

whoneedsmorethan18

1 Like

True that. As others have also said, I’ll flag it with them because I think they have assumed SEPA characteristics will work for BACS, which by the looks of it they won’t.

Interestingly Lloyds commercial’s XML format declares 16 chars to be the limit. Some Open Banking docs I’ve found also declare the max to be 18 chars.

Cheers for pointers, I’ll go and hit them over the head with this info :money_mouth_face:

3 Likes

time2mutethethread

I’m 2019 I moved a client from old manually keyed CHAPS to automated XML CHAPS with their bank. The reference limit went down from 5 lines of (I think) 40 characters to one 18 character reference. That’s progress…