The Money Platform takes payments for loans already repaid

Some Money Platform customers had a payment taken from their bank account unexpectedly and incorrectly on 22 July 2022.

This is what one customer said:

Shocking from The Money Platform. They’ve made a massive cock up and taken money out of peoples accounts on Friday for loans they had already paid in March.

She wasn’t the only one. This morning there were over 25 people saying similar things on Trust Pilot. All those comments came from people who had already repaid the last loan they had from the Money Platform.

It is thought that around 300 customers were affected.

UPDATE: The Money Platform later said:

Our UK banking and processing partner encountered a technical error on Friday 22 July and wrongly re-processed a number of payments made in February and March 2022 by users on The Money Platform. 

It expects to refund the amounts by the end of this week.

Who are The Money Platform?

They describe themselves as “the new way to borrow” because the money is coming from crowdfunding, not from banks.

They say borrowers receive “lower cost, flexible personal loans”. But the Money Platform’s representative APR is 839.20%… not exactly low cost!

They are just another payday lender.

Poor communication from The Money Platform

Customers who tried to get in contact about this on Friday received an automated reply saying:

UNEXPECTED PAYMENT?** If your query is regarding an unexpected payment that was taken on Friday 22nd July, please note that we are working hard to urgently resolve this with our payment provider and return funds to you and we will be in touch as soon as we have an update.

But it was impossible for any of the worried customers to talk to anyone at the weekend.

On Monday morning they still aren’t answering the phone. People who had contacted them on Friday have been told:

We reported this issue to our payment service provider as we believed they had wrongly reprocessed payments from earlier on this year.

We have had an urgent crisis talk with our payment provider this morning – they have now acknowledged their error and are working on getting these funds back to you urgently, but as there are many other transactions affected they may require some time to set this up.

But they haven’t sent out an email to everyone affected. And there is nothing on their Facebook or Twitter accounts.

This is very poor. People who have had to take a payday loan this year may still be in financial difficulty now. The Money Platform should know this and take extra care to tell people what is happening.

This isn’t the first payment problem they have had

The Money Platform had an issue with taking some payments in February/March and it collected some of them a week or so late.

At the time it said it wasn’t its fault, saying:

This problem has been caused by the way that your bank processes transactions rather than by any hiccup at our end.

They won’t be able to get away with that excuse this time!

What compensation should you get?

Obviously everyone affected should be getting that money credited to their accounts at soon as possible.

I think the Money Platform should also pay compensation for this:

• if you haven’t lost any money by this, probably £50.
• if you have now had higher overdraft fees, or were left with no access to money over the weekend, then I suggest you ask for £100.
• where you have had any specific extra costs, such as returned direct debits, then you should ask for them to be refunded by the Money Platform as well.

If the Money Platform doesn’t offer you any compensation, I suggest you send a complaint to support@themoneyplatformsupport.zendesk.com. You can send this to the Financial Ombudsman if you do not get a satisfactory response from the Money Platform.

Also think if the loans from the Money Platform were really affordable or did they make your situation worse? If you had several loans from them, read How to ask for a payday loan refund.

How to stop this from happening again!

The money was taken from your bank account by a Continuous Payment Authority you gave Gracombex (the name of the lender that trades as The Money Platform).

One of the big disadvantages of this is that you do not get the same protection as if you had agreed to a Direct Debit. With a DD you could get straight onto your bank and ask for a refund under the terms of the Direct Debit Guarantee.

The other major disadvantage is that you cannot see a list of the CPAs on your bank account and you can’t simply cancel them in your banking app… how convenient for the lenders.

Instead, you need to phone up your bank and say you want to cancel the CPA. It is your right to do this.

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