Would you please review the site guidelines? They include "Assume good faith."

The cost of getting this wrong is much higher than the benefit of getting it right, and in our experience the probability is higher too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Um, this is how banking works in the UK. Nobody cancels their bank account if they lose their card, they just cancel their card. And given someone else's card I could send them 1p within a minute (even if it's cancelled). Now I've seen this approach, it's what I'll do next time. And it doesn't involve the poster's company in any way, transferring thousands of pounds instantly within the EU is trivial.

Also in a lot of cases these days you don't even have to cancel the card.

If you're like "Oops, that's gone" and it fell into a waterfall or something then, sure, you cancel it and have a replacement sent, but say you just got back from the store and it isn't in your wallet. You call a modern bank. "Hi, I think I lost my card maybe?" Good chance they say - "OK, we'll freeze the card, call us if you find it or if you give up and we'll send a new one".

Both my accounts I just freeze it in the app, but yes, quite.

> Now I've seen this approach, it's what I'll do next time

I'd suggest calling or sending it to the bank instead. I'm sure they can find its owner with a lot less hassle than this.

Both of those options would take longer and be more effort, but I've only find someone else's cards 3 times in 40 years...

Faster Payments is a UK banking thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service

In the UK the details needed to transfer money into an account are on most bank cards (Account Number and Sort Code), so that's enough identifying info.

That would also mean someone can send you money if your card is blocked or cancelled. Account number and sort code don't change when you get a new card.

Also, "Faster Payments" is the name of the normal system to transfer money between accounts in the UK. It doesn't cost the sender anything other than the money they send. It's called "faster" because the old system was a lot slower (because it was based on paper I think?).

The old system (BACS) has been electronic since 1983, or possibly even 1968 when it was introduced. (Wikipedia is unclear, it seems transactions were recorded on magnetic tape for the first 15 years, before using phone lines.) It slowly replaces the paper based system: cheques.

The 2-3 days got the old system will have been a limitation of batch based computer processing from that time, and maybe moving the magnetic tapes around.

I'm curious about this. I've always banked with NatWest so I'm only really familiar with their cards, but my bank account number is definitely not printed on the card (the sort code is).

Do some other UK banks really print the account numbers on their cards? Or is there some way to send a Faster payment to a debit card number?

I'm with Starling Bank, and along with the usual Mastercard numbers (card number, expiry, CVV etc.) it has the account number... though not the sort code, strangely. I guess you could look it up if you wanted to, but you'd need to know this 8-digit number with no label was the account number. Weird.

My personal Barclays debit card has sort code and account number. My RBS business debit card has sort code and company name only.

I think Natwest is the outlier in this case. I've always had my account number and sort code on all my cards with other banks (Barclays, Lloyds, Halifax).

Edit: Maybe also Monzo, no account number on that one.

In my case, I have two card from one bank has sort code and account number. I also have one card from a different bank has none of that.

Pretty sure my Natwest debit card has my account number and sort code on it.

Just checked my Halifax Visa Debit card... Contains my name, visa card number, sort code and bank account number.

Faster Payments is the standard, free way of making payments to bank accounts in the UK. Everyone with online banking here has easy access to it regardless of what bank they use. Also, our debit cards generally have enough information to send someone a payment that way for some reason.

Unless something changed pretty much all payments in the UK are “Faster”.

Salary payments are typically still BACS and I think Faster does have a transaction limit in the 10’s of thousands of pounds range.

IIRC the limit according to the standard is £100,000/day but most banks impose their own arbitrary limit. Assuming things haven't changed in 5 years, this[1] lists the limits for a lot of banks. I can also add to the list that Monzo's is £10,000/day.

1. https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2014/11/customers-bei...

BACS is generally cheaper at volume. In addition, BACS Bureau allows a payroll company to transfer money directly from your employer's account to yours without the money ever reaching their account.

All fixable, but payroll companies are generally chosen on price, not innovation.

Anyone can say anything they want on the internet! The variables here are conveniently precisely aligned where real world chances of this happening are null. I also call BS. But a noteworthy mention to the marketing idea. With all due respect.