Giving Out Bank Account And Sort Code

funkylad20 | 19:38 Wed 29th Jun 2022 | Business & Finance

16 Answers

Hi all, I’m selling a car and the buyer wants to come and buy it tomorrow. They want my bank account number and sort code to set it up so they can transfer the money tomorrow. They have my address obviously. Is it a risk to give them my bank account number and sort code?

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bobbinwales

How else can they pay you?
If you ever give someone a check the details are all on there

barry1010

No, if he paid you by cheque you would have his sort code, account number and signature

THECORBYLOON

"How else can they pay you?"

How about in cash???

jno

how else are they going to get the money to you? I bought a car once and the seller insisted I pay him in cash - I had to cross London with thousands of pounds in my pockets. No thanks, give them your details.

funkylad20

Question Author

Thanks all, I agree, it is just in this day and age you never know! The ‘dodgy’ bit is needing the details tonight as opposed tomorrow when he is here and he hasn’t seen the car in person yet. Happy to give them out to him now as I don’t think anything bad can possibly happen, but I thought I would check

calmck

To pay money in to your account he only needs account name, number and sort code. To take money out of your account he would probably need a code word or pin reader etc. should be safe

Hazlinny

Not seen the car yet? Think twice.

bobbinwales

Yes, with the extra info that he aint seen it I'd be more cautious.

barry1010

He may want to do a test payment of £1 to make sure the details are correct. I always do that with a first transfer

gulliver1

What ever happens, do not give him/her the keys to take the car on a test run unaccompanied.

Buenchico

As has been said, if you write a cheque to someone, you're giving them your account number and sort code anyway. So there's not a great deal of risk to providing those details to someone.

If they've got a sense of mischief though, they could set up a direct debit from your account to their favourite charity ;-)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7174760.stm

Canary42

The banks always advise not to do so, but as has been stated above, how else can you do transfers.

I guess one way would be to open another account (with no overdraft facility) specifically for such a purpose and by judicious filling/emptying it, keeping control on the amount available, but not entirely foolproof.

As an aside, last time I did a transfer I noticed that the banks now do a check against the name (about bloody time) which protects the long-suffering Customer from a possible typo in account number which previously quite happily swept the funds out to the wrong destination without redress.