Overdraft warnings will be displayed to HSBC customers
September 20, 2007 by admin
Filed under News, News-Banking
In a recent announcement the HSBC bank has revealed that its customers will now receive a warning if they try and withdraw money from one of its cash machines and the withdrawal could take them over their overdraft limit.
The machines will display the warning to customers that risk going overdrawn as the result of taking out the cash, which will offer additional protection and help to safeguard the customers from being hit by expensive bank charges.
The bank has warned that this facility will only be available to its own customers and not to customers of other banks that are using the cash machines, and this is because the bank has no access to the overdraft details of customers of other banks even if they are using HSBC cash machines. Over 3500 machines will have the facility to display this message, and the scheme is due to come into force at the beginning of October.
Although the precise wording that will appear to customers has not yet been confirmed HSBC officials state that this will help to make its charges more transparent and help customers to avoid having to pay the charged at all by enabling them to stay within their limits. The bank has also stated that if unauthorised borrowing amounts to under £10 per day no charge will be made. This will also be the case if money is paid back into the account by the end of the day to cover the amount of the money withdrawn or if the customer has not exceeded his or her limit in the past six months prior to going over the limit.
One HSBC official stated: “More than 95% of HSBC cash withdrawals are now made at ATMs and while you can already check your account balance before you make a withdrawal, few people do. We believe that alerting customers at this point will enable them to make an informed choice about whether to proceed.”
Tom Smith
20th September 2007
