If you ever get buyers’ remorse after paying for things like a gigantic Snorlax, TukTuk, or even a bus, help is at hand.
Monzo Bank have introduced an ‘undo payment’ feature which they claim is an industry first.
It means that if you send a payment and immediately have second thoughts, there’s a way back from the precipice.
The feature could be helpful if someone sends money to the wrong person, types in the wrong number of zeros, or at the last minute realises they have been scammed.
You’ll have to be quick if you want to use the feature, though, as it will only work for up to 60 seconds after the payment is sent.
The Undo Payments feature will begin rolling out to the 12 million Monzo customers from today and will be a ‘comfort blanket’ giving users peace of mind with their transfers, the bank said.
How does the Undo Payment feature work?
After making a bank transfer, customers will see a timer appear on the payment confirmation screen with an option to undo the payment (the default time is 15 seconds).
The customer can tap the ‘Undo Payment’ button there, or from the Home screen or payment detail screen, before the timer runs out.
As soon as the user hits that button, Monzo stops the payment from being sent. The money never leaves the account, and the person or business won’t even know that the money was almost sent to them.
Customers can configure the Undo Payments timer, choosing between the following lengths of time to undo a payment, or turn it off all together:
- 10 seconds
- 15 seconds (default)
- 30 seconds
- 60 seconds
They shared their research carried out by Censuswide showing that almost one in three Brits (30%) have either sent money to the wrong person or sent the wrong amount in the last year.
The data which studied of 2001 representative Brits highlighted that over three quarters of those who sent a wrong payment (78%) realised they’d made an error within a minute of it happening.
This is a major issue: the bank says that over £825m was sent by mistake in the past year.
Over two thirds of Brits (68%) who this affected claim a simple typing error, such as adding a zero, was the reason for sending a wrong payment.
But trying to retrieve mistakenly sent payments from any bank is usually a long process, with no guarantee of success.
The new ‘undo payment’ feature offers a customisable 10-60-second window that allows customers to cancel a bank transfer.
In terms of how it works, it’s really more of ‘delayed payment’ option, as the payment is not actually made to anyone else’s account until the buffer time runs out.
In recent years, the options for editing things once they have been sent have become more widespread. It is now possible to edit WhatsApp messages, iMessages and tweets within a certain time frame, whereas in the past you just had to live with the annoying typos.
Andy Sacre, head of payments at Monzo, said: ‘We know it’s important to be able to send money quickly and easily – but we also know that mistakes can happen, whether that’s sending the wrong amount to someone or paying the wrong person.
‘In another industry-first, we’re bringing the best of banking and technology together to solve that problem for our customers, with this simple yet powerful feature that ensures they can send money with Monzo more confidently and safely than ever before.’
Other UK banks have not yet announced similar moves to cancel payments, however Nationwide told Metro they have continued to invest in digital channels, introducing biometric selfie authentications in their app meaning new customers can access their current account within minutes of applying, as well as full digital access to new current accounts within one to three days.
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