Amex prohibiting payments from unrecognized third parties. No balance transfers?
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I was sent a letter from AMEX today (in UK), I have both a credit card and a gold charge card with them (personal).
The letter reads that, going forward, they will no longer process payments against my account unless they come from my own personal bank account, or a joint account with my name.
Specifically, they will no longer process payments from “unrecognized third parties or entities”, giving some excuse of anti-money-laundering protection or whatever.
My immediate thought was, does this not also make a balance transfer to another card impossible? Isn’t this anti-competitive?
Thoughts welcome.
Seems easy to justify for money laundering purposes, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this is actually behaviour the FCA would encourage.
Think that means the days of billhop to amex gone now?
Seems easy to justify for money laundering purposes, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this is actually behaviour the FCA would encourage.
In my experience, this is the sort of thing that the FCA would actually ask tricky ‘customer outcome’ questions about e.g. something along the lines of ‘would you refuse payment from a spouse for a vulnerable customer (e.g. incapacitated due to injury)?’
Think that means the days of billhop to amex gone now?
It is about paying in to your account. Billhop charges your Amex.
It says business accounts are not allowed? So does that mean I can’t transfer from my own business account to clear the balance?
It says business accounts are not allowed? So does that mean I can’t transfer from my own business account to clear the balance?
I’ve continued to do this since “the letter”, and no problems so far.
It says business accounts are not allowed? So does that mean I can’t transfer from my own business account to clear the balance?
Unless the BACS/FP systems now have a flag to indicate a payment is coming from a non-personal account, I’m not entirely sure how they would know the difference between a payment from “Orlando McO” personal account and “Orlando McO” Sole trader Business Account.
It’ll take some extremely good algorithms to verify the remitter name accurately at the best of times.
Seems easy to justify for money laundering purposes, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this is actually behaviour the FCA would encourage.
In my experience, this is the sort of thing that the FCA would actually ask tricky ‘customer outcome’ questions about e.g. something along the lines of ‘would you refuse payment from a spouse for a vulnerable customer (e.g. incapacitated due to injury)?’
That’s what POAs are for. Things go wrong when people try to undertake workarounds to avoid the cost of setting one up.
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