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Edit Admin
The worst part is that "rive" really is a word, usually encountered as its past particple "riven" in passive-voice sentences, meaning "split or tear apart violently".
Read into that what you will.
Edit Admin
I'm not British (but I worked for a bank for years here in Austria), so I wonder, what is the actual point of the "amount in words" field?
Edit Admin
I'm a bit late to the party so I can't write "rist" or "ecnod" but I can write "hrid"
Addendum 2024-09-27 07:13: It's good to see that the avatars fro the undefined staff of DCU are not numbers.
Edit Admin
It's for generating the electronic equivalent of a cheque (but online), and "amount in words" is a feature of cheques in all three of the countries where I have or have had a chequebook.
Well. No. In one I had a checkbook, in the second, I had a chequebook, and in the third I had a carnet de cheques... But they all insisted on having the amount in words. (Noteworthy, one of those three countries is the same one where Nationwide operates...)
Admin
It's a really primitive system. if you could submit the form, it would lead to a page that you have to print out. Then you put that piece of paper in an envelope, add a stamp and post it. When it arrives at the bank they generate a cheque, stick it in another envelope and post it back. Finally you have to get the cheque to a bank branch.
Blank forms are available, and on these you write the amount in figures and words, like on a cheque.
Admin
I'm not sure Mike T's submission is all that contradictory. He was successfully authorized to uze the service, but, unfortunately, after that, it was determined that the service is unavailable.
Edit Admin
It's the same in USA, when you write a check (aka cheque in non-US countries), you write the numbers and the amount in words.
However, I've never seen an electronic check issuance system where you have to enter the amount in words. Once you go digital, you use Zelle (US inter-bank money transfer system for consumers; most banks participate, but not all) to send money to either an email, a phone, or the account number of the recipient, and you just enter the amount numerically.
Admin
It seems so old-fashioned now (I'm a UK citizen and don't think I've written a cheque in around 10 years, maybe more), but writing the amount in words is a security feature. Without it, it's too easy for someone (eg the payee) to eg scribble an extra 0 on the end of the numeric amount if they manage to get hold of it for a second.
I've never seen an online portal for producing a cheque, that's a really weird mixture of old new "technology"!
Admin
The goal is that by writing the amount in two different ways it's harder to make an uncaught mistake.
If I write on the cheque "$7,000" and "seven hundred dollars" it's obvious one of them is wrong, and the cheque is considered void.
If it was just numeric twice you introduce the possibility of someone making the same mistake twice.
It has benefits in tamper protection(to change the amount you need to change the written version which is harder), but at this point in time where digital has paper it's value has shifted to purely error correction.
Edit Admin
I wonder what Fiona thinks of her coworkers, all named Undefined Undefined. Makes for difficult meetings.
Admin
Airplane! (1980) scene of the Three Pilots getting ready for take off is a classic Discussion The character names are Roger, Clarence, Victor, Oveur.
Oveur: Flight 209 you are ready for takeoff Clarence: Roger Roger:Huh? Victor: Request Vector, over. Clarence: huh? Victor: we have clearance, Clarence Clarence: Roger, Roger Clarence: What is our vector, victor? Oveur: Radio clearance,
Admin
Your name's not ~~Bruce~~ Undefined?
No, it's Fiona.
That's going to be awful confusing. Do you mind if we call you Undefined?
Edit Admin
But who was on First?
Edit Admin
My personal hypothesis is that someone found an "isnumeric" function and thought "oh, great, I'll just use that" and used it on every character and now the field doesn't allow the letters A-F.
Edit Admin
It looks like that HBO Max intern got a new job working at McDonalds.
Edit Admin
It's not an electronic issuance system. As Ross K says, all it does is validate the input (wrongly), allow you to print it out, then put it in an envelope (that's a real physical envelope, not something to do with SMTP) and send it by post to Nationwide. Nationwide will print a cheque for you and post it back. to you. You then send it on to the payee. The payee will send it to their bank to be cleared.
Why it exists as a service, I have no idea. The rubric suggests that the money will be withdrawn when they process the form which is unusual. So perhaps it is some special kind of cheque that is guaranteed not to bounce.
Edit Admin
Yeah, I know. In fact, the first country where I had such a thing was the US...
Here in Europe, it's trivially simple to do if you have the recipient's IBAN - enter the IBAN and the amount in figures (not words) into the fields in your online banking app/site, press "go", and the money wends its merry way to the recipient. (In such situations, I usually pay the trivial fee for immediate delivery of the money, just to accelerate the process. By "trivial", I mean below one euro regardless of the size of the transfer.)(1)
(1) And the best bit is when you're at some convention or other, in the specific case the Lille International Tattoo Convention 2024, and you want to buy something (an item, not a tattoo) from one of the stands, but (a) you don't have enough cash left and (b) the stand doesn't have a card machine and (c) the stand's operators are from [REDACTED] rather than somewhere in France (so it's an international payment). "Can I pay by direct transfer?" "Sure." "OK, what's your IBAN?" "(details), but it's in [REDACTED], so no idea how long it will take." I checked the "immediate" option anyway, and it made it to the guy's bank in essentially no time.
Edit Admin
Yes it is a "special kind of cheque that is guaranteed not to bounce". I'm not sure of the terminology in other countries, but in the UK if you want a non-bounceable cheque you get a "bankers draft". This is functionally a cheque, but instead of drawing on your account (which might not have any money in it), it draws on the bank's own account (which really ought to have money in it!). When you request one, they take the money out of your account and put it in theirs, then give you the bankers draft.
But there's a complication - Nationwide isn't a bank, it's a building society. The only real difference nowadays is that building societies are owned by the members (i.e. the account holders) while banks have shareholders. But you still can't get a bankers draft from something that isn't a bank. What you can get is a building society cheque - which is exactly the same thing, except the name is different and it's drawn on a building society not a bank.
At one time this was the only way to get a cheque from a building society, as they didn't issue cheque books. Most still don't - the exception being Nationwide, which is a full member of the cheque clearing system and issues cheque books just like a bank. So you can just write your own cheques, unless you really need a guaranteed "building society cheque" - which is what this form is to request.
Edit Admin
Hi, I'm Fiona, and this is my teammate "Undefined", and this is my other teammate "Undefined", and this is my other teammate "Undefined".
Admin
If it follows paper form standard then those words are written without spaces.
Edit Admin
That was my submission. My bad, I should've mentioned that the operation completed successfully. It was a Google Cloud command line authentication that launched it, and after that page showed it proceeded with valid authentication.
Edit Admin
Interesting, US/Can don't participate in IBAN, here we have a combo of "routing/ABA number" which identifies the bank, and the account number. But usually with Zelle, it's easier to just ask for the recipient's Zelle registered email or phone, and it shows you the name to confirm you're sending to the right person. And it's instant for free, unless there is a security reason why they hold it for a day, and there is no way to "pay" out of that delay, and I'm not sure exactly what the rules are which govern when the 1 business day delay kicks in.
Edit Admin
We have the exact same system in US. The non-bounceable checks are called either "certified checks" or "cashier's checks" (these terms are synonymous) and they work exactly the same here as you described they do in UK.
What you call a "building society" is called a "credit union". I think all US credit unions have check books, though. And I'm not sure about certified checks from credit unions, I imagine they have that service. Other than being owned by members, the other difference is that credit unions don't get regulated by the feds like banks do, which has its pros and cons.
Addendum 2024-09-27 19:38: You typically get certified checks for large purchases where the money has to clear immediately and there cannot be any risk of a bounce. Usually those transactions get settled either with a certified check or a wire. Think car or house purchase.