New Barclays, NatWest, Lloyds, Nationwide, Santander rules will delay payments by three days

New Barclays, NatWest, Lloyds, Nationwide, Santander rules will delay payments by three days

High street banks handed new powers by the Treasury to delay and investigate payments suspected of being fraudulent under the Labour Party government.

by · Birmingham Live

UK banks are being given an extra three days to delay payments in an effort to beat scams. High street banks handed new powers by the Treasury to delay and investigate payments suspected of being fraudulent under the Labour Party government.

The move comes as part of a crackdown on digital fraud up and down the country. Some of the UK's biggest banks are to be handed new powers by the Treasury to delay and investigate payments suspected of being fraudulent, it has emerged.

The time that payments can be delayed where there are reasonable grounds to suspect fraud will be extended. It will be widened from the current window of completing or refusing a payment before the end of the next business day to up to four working days.

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The biggest banks in the UK include HSBC, while Barclays is the second largest in terms of assets. Other huge high street lenders include NatWest, Lloyds and Nationwide, which is the biggest building society in the country, as well as Santander.

Tulip Siddiq, the City minister, told the Guardian: “It ruins the lives of ordinary people who haven’t done anything wrong. Our thinking in the Treasury is we need to protect these people. The best way of protecting them is to prevent the fraud before it takes place. So giving banks more time to investigate suspicious payments, before a payment takes place, is probably the best cure.”

“It’s not like we’ll end the fraud epidemic with this one piece of legislation,” she said. "But we’re trying to do things across government to address these things. [We will do] lots more probably. The fact is there’s a huge problem with fraud and this is one aspect of dealing with it. I’m working across government, with all ministers, on how we improve our approach.”