NTMA increases rates for State Savings products

Requested an online refund from a matured 10 year bond on September 25th, got a phone call to verify the refund transaction on October 3rd, received the transfer today into my N26 bank account, reinvested today, the full 17k refund, into a 10 year bond online, all seamlessly.

I have to say their online portal, is significantly easier, than using paper/post/lodging cheques etc

All single/sole holdings
 
Online would definitely be better but Joint cert / bond holders have no choice other than paper forms for cashing in. That said, it did all go through without any issues.

We posted the paper forms and the cash was in the bank 10 days from posting.
To reinvest, the paper form with a cheque was posted last monday, the cheque was cashed today Thursday, 3 days later. As joint holders you can buy online but only up to your debit card limit.

I posted on this occasion as I could not get to a Post Office. Some might not be aware but you can fill out the form and hand it in at a Post Office with payment, if required you can also give in any ID, they will photocopy it and give back the originals immediately along with your receipt.
 
I have an account but am now registering for online portal....My concern is that it seems from FAQs you can log in and change bank account. If account was compromised is it possible receiving account could be changed and cashed out without me knowing in time ? Do they have a robust verification method of changing bank account details?
 
They have two factor authentication for logging in - SMS verification code to your phone after entering your email address and password. Your account credentials AND phone would need to have been compromised for somebody unauthorised to get in. Use a strong password not used by any other of your accounts to increase security.
 
How exactly do you buy day 20k of prize bonds? Only way online seems to be just using card?
In chunks of whatever the daily limit is on the card I guess? My PTSB debit card has a 5k daily limit as far as I recall. So, five purchases of 5k each?
 
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Do they have a robust verification method of changing bank account details?
To answer your specific question the answer is No. Once logged on the bank account number can be changed without further authentication, so if you log on and forget to log out, someone accessing your screen could change the bank account number. They do send you a letter in the post confirming the new account number. There is also a serious timing issue in that any previously requested cash-ins will ignore the bank account number change and will be paid to the old bank account.

If account was compromised is it possible receiving account could be changed and cashed out without me knowing in time ?
Yes. You will receive a letter in the post confirming the payment details, however in the case of a number of recent transfers, the money was in my account prior to the letter being received. You will also receive an online notification of the encashment, however the usefulness of this depends on how methodical you are in monitoring the messages.

Your underlying point is valid, there should be some form of second level authentication when changing the bank account number. The majority of good fintech apps do this.
 
How exactly do you buy day 20k of prize bonds? Only way online seems to be just using card?
You can purchase up to the €250k/€500k holding limits offline using a purchase form and cheque, either by post or at a post office.

Online purchases are limited by your debit card daily/transaction limit. From a previous post in this thread these are:

BOI (€25,000 transaction and daily limit), AIB (€5,000 limit per transaction, €7,000 total per day), N26 (€20,000 transaction and monthly limit), PTSB (€2,500transaction limit), EBS (€2,000 transaction limit), or Revolut (€5,000 per 96 hours). By way of comparison Ulster Bank was €50,000.

You cannot use a credit card. You cannot use a bank transfer.
 
I stand corrected. I may have been thinking of the daily account transfer limit?
Easy mistake to make. It’s a muddle of inconsistency. BOI has a daily debit card limit of €25k and a lower daily transfer limit of €20k. AIB has it the other way around with a daily debit card €5,000 limit per transaction and €7,000 total per day and a daily transfer limit of €10k. Etc.
 
Seems bizarre that its not possible to manage State Savings online for Joint accounts.

Myself and Mrs redstar have no problems managing our Joint accounts in a bank (current, savings etc...)

No bank transfer either - must still be 1990 in NTMA.
 
As Freelance said other Fintech insist things like can only be paid to accounts with same name etc. While MFA is a great help there have been rare cases where an individual been specifically targeted people have managed to get the SIM canceled and number moved to another SIM. That way the hacker can get the SMS messages...I don't care if somebody hacks in and looks at account, the big concern is they cannot move money out to any account other than the nominated account
 
As Freelance said other Fintech insist things like can only be paid to accounts with same name etc
There is absolutely no validation currently in place in SEPA transactions to actually check this. You're getting a false sense of security from it.
 
In order to do which they would need to be able to receive your texts as well as having your email address and password or access to a live login.
In other threads people give out about having to receive and enter security SMS codes in order to do various actions online when they are already logged in/authenticated.
Sometimes the banks simply can't win!
 
It would cost them nothing to add explicit two factor authentication to a change of bank account number and not withstanding the whataboutery that would represent a security enhancement. The current absence of this is poor design, absence of security best practice and the general sloppiness that is typical of state savings, online and offline.
 
Seems bizarre that its not possible to manage State Savings online for Joint accounts.
There is an underlying issue in that all state savings joint holdings operate on the basis of “all signatures”. This makes online operation complicated and difficult to implement. This is in contrast to most non-commercial joint bank accounts which operate on the basis of “any signature”.
 
PTSB operate joint signatures in a club account I use. One person submits a request and nothing at all happens until the other person reviews and approves. Not rocket science if PTSB manage it !
 
Last 3 weeks of old regime I won. That's against the odds.
Today is first day of new give away regime. No wins! Put not your faith in dices.
 
The State Savings website is showing unavailable at the moment when you try to sign in to your account, but it is still functioning when you go direct to 'buy now'. I was able to complete two purchases of five year certificates and have received email confirmation.
 
The State Savings website is showing unavailable at the moment when you try to sign in to your account
As is usual when it falls over at a weekend, it doesn't "recover" until Monday. Perish the thought that State Savings would either monitor site availability or have arrangements for unplanned out of hours work to resolve whatever the issues are.