If I tell people here in the UK that I have a cheque in the mail, they laugh and ask what year it is. “You mean a paper cheque? That you have to go to the bank to deposit? Or you watch your account for the next two weeks waiting for that money to be withdrawn when it’s finally cashed?” Yes, that’s the one.
Banks here can easily transfer money between them and rarely charge you any fees to do so. This means that we can withdraw money from any other bank’s ATM without any problems and also that if we wanted to pay our friends for a trip we were taking together, we could transfer money straight to their account.
Online banking is prevalent and makes it really easy to send money to anyone else’s account, regardless of their bank. All you need is their 6 digit sort code (identifying their bank and branch) and their 8 digit account number. With this info, our bank takes us through a couple steps to transfer the money. (Confession: I think this part’s kind of cool.)
- I log in to our bank’s website and choose to make a payment.
- I choose to add a new recipient (either a business or person).
- I put in their name, sort code, account number, amount and date.
- I click continue, after which it asks me to confirm and says I’ll get a phone call.
- A 4 digit code shows on the screen and I immediately receive a phone call from the bank on the phone we have registered with them.
- On the automated call, I enter the code to confirm the transaction.
- The call ends and the browser window immediately tells me that the transaction has gone through and the money will be transferred within about 2 hours.
- After all this, I still get a text message to our phone confirming that I transferred money from our account.
It’s nice to be able to transfer money so easily, but I really like the way the web and phone systems are linked up to add an extra level of security. Or maybe using two-factor authentication just makes me feel like a secret agent.
