SMS notifications and payment reminders help keep your money safe and keep you informed. It’s easy to feel harassed or annoyed by them, but the service is there to help you keep the costs of banking down, and to protect your money against cyber criminals.
Cyber criminals
When the world moved to online banking, so did criminals. We use secure encryption for all of your online banking sessions, so the criminals can’t simply break in. Remember, nobody can access your account online without knowing your personal username and Remote PIN, so keep yours a secret.
Criminals will try to trick you into revealing your sign in details, usually by sending you a fake email that appears to be from your bank, but that encourages you to click a link to sign in. This is why we will never ask you for your sign in details by email.
Knowledge is power
Our notification service sends you an SMS whenever any action takes place on your account. You’ll receive a message when you sign in for an online banking session, when you do a card purchase, or when you draw cash. Even actions as simple as increasing your daily card limits or changing your address will trigger an SMS notification.
Reaction time
The point of all these messages is to keep you informed about what’s happening to your money, all of the time. The key thing to look out for is a notification message about an action you know for a fact you didn’t take.
Suppose you were at work, and you received an SMS notification that you’ve used your card at a shopping centre on the other side of the country. You would alert us immediately, enabling us to respond much faster than if you’d only picked it up on a monthly statement.
Coping with change
It’s now the norm for both parents to have jobs. The obvious advantage is a bigger family income, but it also means that everyone needs to be a lot more organised to keep things running smoothly. Given the hectic pace of daily life, it’s easy for things to unintentionally fall through the cracks – and that’s where payment reminders come in.
Protecting you
Suppliers and service providers like debit orders because they get paid on time, and the convenience works both ways because you don’t have to think about it. Even so, many people prefer to pay their bills manually using electronic funds transfers (EFT) instead.
If you accidentally forget to do a payment on time, you’ll most likely be charged interest or a penalty fee, something you could avoid if you set up some form of payment reminder.
DIY reminders
The most obvious choice is to set a recurring reminder on your smartphone, but if you don’t have one, you still have options. You can get payment reminders sent to you by SMS – for free – thanks to Google.
Every Gmail account comes with an associated Google Calendar account that you can use to manage and schedule your time. Create a calendar event on payday titled something like “Pay my bills”, and set it to repeat every month. You can choose to be reminded by SMS, or email (or both) at no cost, protecting you from overdue fees you might otherwise be charged if you forgot.
