NatWest Bank now allows its customers to set their own daily bank transfer limits, hoping it will help combat rising fraud–other banks may follow suit.
Transfer limits refer to the maximum accumulated daily transfers permitted by the bank in a single day.
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“To provide you with extra protection from fraud and scams, we’ve lowered your personal payment limit and given you the ability to manage your own payment limit,” the bank tells customers.
The cap for personal customers is per person not per account
Payments made on a Saturday, Sunday or Bank Holiday will form part of the next working day’s allowance.
If a party to a joint account makes a payment to someone else from that account, it will also affect the daily limit of the other signatories on the account.
For example, if you sent £20,000.00 from your joint account, it would affect the daily limit of your other accounts you see on Online Banking.
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By GlobalDataNatWest is hoping that giving customers more control will reduce authorised push payment (APP) scams – where victims are convinced to move money to an account controlled by a criminal.
The number of reported APP scams rose by 22% in 2020, with scammers stealing £479m (up 5% on the previous year).
What are other banks saying?
A survey by consumer organisation Which? asked the largest current account providers if they plan to follow NatWest’s lead and allow customers to set their own caps.
Nationwide and Virgin Money say this is something they’re considering bringing in.
But there are no plans to introduce a daily transfer limit that customers set themselves at Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Metro Bank, Santander, Starling, The Co-operative Bank or TSB.
Barclays said payment limits are reviewed on a regular basis but, for now, customers can only set their own daily ATM limit and spending limits on their cards.
HSBC also said that payment limits are reviewed on a regular basis. TSB said it hasn’t seen customer demand for flexible transfer limits but will keep its approach under review.
Metro Bank said, “this is something we continue to explore.”
Monzo only allows customers to increase – not decrease – their default daily transfer limit of £10,000, on a case-by-case basis.
Starling told Which? that it’s ‘not convinced by the protection it would provide’ but said it is exploring a new approach to managing payment limits, using data to identify unusual payments:
“We want to be able to assess individual payments that are out of character relative to the customer’s payment habits.”
