The Lemon Fool

One of my offspring is trying to send money abroad, as part of showing proof of funds for a visa.

I say abroad but it turns out the recipient bank is in Belfast, so not really abroad

He's been given bank details etc.

The problem is that the payment reference is way longer than the 18 characters allowed by our bank. This is needed to match up the transaction I assume.

I wondered if, when done as an international transfer rather than a normal fast payment, a longer reference is used?

But I've tried every way I can from our bank account and also Wise.

I always get told the reference is too long. First direct direct won't allow an "international" payment entirely in GBP anyway

We need to send a fixed amount of GBP. Sounds easy!

We're trying to sort this out by phoning the institution involved but any time we get through on the phone they just hang up within 30 seconds or so.

The important part of the reference is well within 18 characters, but I'm afraid that if I just truncate it, that won't be recognised.

Midsmartin wrote:One of my offspring is trying to send money abroad, as part of showing proof of funds for a visa.

I say abroad but it turns out the recipient bank is in Belfast

Alarm bells ringing very loudly here.

1) Proof of funds is done by documentation, not by sending money...

2) "Belfast" isn't abroad.

While I totally agree with the concerns and alarm bells.....

International bank transfers may use the "Iban" number, which can be more than 18 characters.
It's prefixed with a country code and can be up to 32 characters.

For example
https://wise.com/gb/iban/ireland/ulster-bank

I ran into issues trying to fund an account this way, but discovered that there was a "non international" way to fund the same account as well. I wound up using "Fast pay", the normal way to transfer funds within the UK. Though in my case it was to their UK bank account.

You may suffer charges using "international" bank transfers, which is why I sought an alternative. Using Iban is a special case, not the standard case, and you will need to find out how to do such "international" bank transfers if there is no other alternative.

We're trying to sort this out by phoning the institution involved but any time we get through on the phone they just hang up within 30 seconds or so.

Alarm bells rang for me too.

And isn't Belfast still in the UK, if so why isn't Faster Payment service available?

Laughton wrote:

We're trying to sort this out by phoning the institution involved but any time we get through on the phone they just hang up within 30 seconds or so.

Alarm bells rang for me too.

And isn't Belfast still in the UK, if so why isn't Faster Payment service available?

Well, Faster Payments, may not work if you are paying for a visa from India, China, the USA or anywhere other than the UK.
Hence they may default to suggesting Iban. I'd check that they don't accept Faster Payments, before assuming that they don't.

The issue is the reference I need to give
Faster payments has a maximum of 18 characters for the reference field, but I have a 27 character reference.

Without that, that might not match the payment to us.

I think the payment instructions would work if we were not in the UK too and could make an international transfer.

Apologies, I don't think anyone here can solve this! We need to plug away at the organisation who gave apparently incorrect payment info. Alas it's a bureaucratic system, and their support is useless.

With respect I think you are missing the point made by others, unsure why sending money would count as proof of funds?

Good luck