Had a bit of an interesting one with Alliance & Leicester yesterday. We use them for our business banking and I had a couple of fairly large cheques to pay in. Normally I pop them in an envelope and take them into a post office, but this takes over a week to get them into our account, so I went to a local branch and used their deposit machine.

Their deposit machines are pretty neat, in that they take a photo of the cheque and put it on your receipt. Yesterday however, the machine couldn’t work out the value of one of the cheques, so it used a zero value. I cancelled the transaction and used the old fashioned paper paying in slip and took it to the counter. The lady behind the counter noticed it was a commercial bank account and promptly told me that I couldn’t pay money in over the counter.
Apparently our terms and conditions with the bank mean we can’t pay in money over the counter, only via the deposit machines and the post office. A little odd really seeing as the local bank will just empty the deposit machine and process it there.

Some of you may know that I’ve gone into a partnership with two other friends. We’ve been attempting to open a business bank account with the Abbey for well over a month now. It’s come to the point where we’ve asked them to cease the creation of the account. As this is a rather long post, all is explained below by clicking the link!
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I got a call from the Natwest fraud department this evening. They wanted to check my most recent purchases as someone used my card, or rather my card number to buy things that I don’t generally buy.

The two purchases that were made using my card number were from a website selling ladies cloths and a donation to Christian aid. I’m guessing that whoever was using my card illegally, wanted to make sure they got rid of their sin and have a clear path to heaven by making a donation to a Christian charity! I think they failed to remember that they were using someone else’s money, which in my books counts as a beating in hell.

I blogged the other week about the Natwest Card Reader. Since that time, I’ve received my own card reader through the post.

Initial set up with Natwest was fairly straight forward and I had no problems with getting it to work. Whilst I think this device will do a great deal of good, I can see where it will inconvenience some people. Unlike a lot of people, I generally only use internet banking at home or on my laptop if needed when away.

As it stands at the moment, Natwest are only using the card reader for adding new payee’s to your online account, which doesn’t pose much of a problem to me. If they start enforcing the use of the card reader to login and do other menial tasks, then I would reconsider being a customer. Bring back the RSA Securid!

I got a letter through from Natwest today about some new improved security measures rolling out to their online banking service. Within the next few weeks it looks as though I’m going to get a Natwest branded card reader, similar to the image on the left.
This will work in unison with the other passwords I have setup with their online banking and will prevent anyone gaining access to parts of my online banking should they manage to get my passwords.

I quite like the look of this system. It reminds me of the RSA Securid I had to use when working for a large ISP some time ago. This version looks a little more user friendly however, and will only work when you place your card inside the reader and enter its PIN number.

The card reader seems to give another three layers of security as any fraudsters will need a copy of your card, PIN number and your unique card reader to be able to get access to money transfer options. I’ll be sure to write another post when I get my card reader as I’m intrigued as to how it works and whether the process of using online banking is hindered by the new system.