"We apologise to both the broker and their customer for the confusion and inconvenience caused, and are taking steps to resolve the issue."
Barclays has issued a statement after a mortgage broker was told that the Bank won’t accept direct debits from a Monzo current account or any other online bank.
When keying a case yesterday, Jamie Lennox of Dimora Mortgages said Barclays' system wouldn't recognise sort codes from Monzo Bank when verifying the details with the Bank Wizard button.
Jamie was told by a Barclays chat assistant that "for direct debit we do not accept Monzo Bank, as it is an online bank", adding that "as per the policy, we do not accept online banks for direct debits".
Jamie said his client will now have to either use a more expensive lender or open a new current account for the sake of one debit.
However, Barclays has since clarified its position to Financial Reporter, stating that it does accept direct debits from online banks.
A Barclays spokesperson said: “We can confirm that Barclays do accept mortgage direct debits from Monzo bank. This is a rare instance of a sort code being allocated that hadn’t yet been uploaded to our system. This prevented us from being able to verify and process the mandate instruction successfully. We apologise to both the broker and their customer for the confusion and inconvenience caused, and are taking steps to resolve the issue.”
