We work hard to ensure when customers want to pay us money, it is easy and payments are automatically applied as soon as received, where possible.
Many customers use UK Faster Payments (GBP only), which means while transfers can take two hours, generally they are received instantly, we process them instantly 24×7 and everyone is happy. For this to work the reference must be correct, i.e. just the account number. No matter how many times we say “just”, “only”, “nothing but” the account number, some people don’t get it and add extracts of War & Peace in there. This results in the payment needing to be manually processed during office hours for which we levy an admin fee. I have no doubt those affected won’t be reading this blog and 99.9% of customers do get it, but if you are inclined to be on the verbose side, please check your reference for a smoother experience.
Internationally, we have extensive banking arrangements to enable payments to be as local as they can be, including SEPA in Europe and ACH in the USA. The same caveats apply with the references – payments will be applied automatically on receipt if they are correct. Lead-times vary by system and are rarely as instant as Faster Payments.
Outside of these systems customers use SWIFT. Payments are expensive, take considerably longer, and it is rare for references to survive intact. Of course, if they do, we’ll still process automatically assuming an odd amount hasn’t been robbed along the way.
Credit card payments are available in the portal but these are for emergency use only and thus limited in size and chargeable.
As an all-round alternative, we introduced crypto-payments (in USDT or USDC over Solana) some months ago. Although using USD stable-coins, we’ll convert to the appropriate account currency on receipt. Each account has a unique address which is available in the portal. You can send any amount (only round tens are treated as prepayments automatically) from anywhere and it should be credited instantly. If you haven’t used this yet and love banks as much as I do, please give it a go!
