Currency Fair and Money Laundering

[Bograt]

We have used Currency Fair for nearly 4 years to pay our Cyprus property rent from the UK. We've never had any problems and found them efficient.

When we set up our rent payment this week, we had an email from Currency Fair. The email did not appear to be from a secure server, and we thought it was spam at first. The email asked us for personal information about the person we were paying to, including their date of birth, full name, where they were born and their address.

We contacted Currency Fair, as this seemed so odd. They send it was a money laundering check. I don't see how you are expected to know the date of birth, town of birth etc of somebody that you are paying money to for a business transaction. None of the details that we have been using for years have changed in any way, same payee, same bank account for us etc.

CF have now said they will contact the bank in question and get back to us, but in the meantime we are left hanging. This means that our rent payment will be late, and although we have explained this to the rental agent I am not very happy.

Have any of you helpful members of PL had this happen to you, or do you have any thoughts?

Thanks for any advice or information.

[Varky]

Another example of unnecessary bureaucracy. Surely if the sender has been checked out and his bank account (that has also been checked out) that is the source of the funds things should be OK.
If the sending bank is dodgy then the sender needs to be aware of this.

Sounds like some jobsworth some where has thought out another impractical way to make things difficult for the common man/woman. Rather than mess the common man around why don't they address the problem where it actually is instead of skirting round the problem.

[PeteandSylvi]

I am suffering from unnecessary bureaucracy similar to this from First Direct and not for the first time. I think part of the problem is that the Banks came under such fire for lax procedures since the big recession that some of them now go over the top particularly when even more compliance requirements land on their shoulders. First Direct recently decided, when I was renewing a particular savings account that they now had to fill in a form regarding my tax. Eventually they phoned and I gave them my tax reference number however some jobsworth somewhere decided it must be in writing so they sent me a form with the demand that it must be returned within 14 days of the date of the letter. All but impossible with Cyprus post.

I think that we will all see more nonsense like this as time goes on.

If I was making a rent payment I probably would elect to have Currency Fair send the money direct into my Cyprus Bank account and setup the standing order from that account.

Pete

[Dominic]

Was this ever resolved?

[PeteandSylvi]

Was this ever resolved?

If you question is for me, it is still ongoing. I was given a ridiculous response claiming the letter was a standard one for the UK and they will allow a concession to reply by late August. I haven't asked why they sent a standard UK letter to Cyprus! I will add that each time they cause one of these daft situations they also make a compensatory payment of £50!

Pete

[Dominic]

I was actually asking Bograt, but on one level it sounds like you have a nice little earner!

[Bograt]

Well Mr Dominic, it is still not resolved - grrr! The money has left our account, but as yet we don't know if the bank has accepted the payment - we've heard nothing more. The money is stuck in limbo-land, we can't make other arrangements to pay the rent as it may end up paid twice, and I am preparing to ask our rental agent where she was born and how old she is! Luckily she has a good sense of humour.

[Dominic]

Well I hope it gets sorted soon. I remember when we were buying our property and had to shift a large amount of stirling to another account how difficult that was. We actually found a loophole in the bank's system though.

[Bograt]

Thanks Dominic. After my previous post I contacted the agent, she checked again, and the rent had just arrived this afternoon - phew. We received no notification from either Currency Fair or whichever bank was messing about, but at least it's sorted now. A lot of hassle for nothing. Perhaps I'll try the compensation route as well huh!