Having only recently somehow managed to breach basic GDPR legislation in the Nigel Farage unbanking fiasco the morons at NatWest have now written to their customers and told them they are limiting them to £24K a year annual cash deposits, with further limits on withdrawals, effective from 12th September 2023.
Must be a CRIMINAL!
The stated goal of these new limitations is to prevent money laundering - to prevent criminals from depositing large sums of cash.
The problem with this is that many small businesses take cash payments, which make up around 15-20% of all transactions still in the UK (survey results vary from 15-20%) and some of these are easily going to exceed that £24K a year limit - we are thinking in terms of revenue here, not profit, after all.
I mean even the HMRC doesn't require you to register a business for VAT until you hit £85K worth of sales, so any face to face business with revenue over that amount is likely to suffer because of this restriction.
Natwest have also introduced restrictions on withdrawals - the terms are flexible so it can just impose any restriction on any account for any reason.
I honestly don't know what they are playing at... obviously this is a matter of convenience and control for them - the less cash they have to deal with the fewer cashiers they have to pay, and easier it is for them to track money if more transactions are digital.
But this is a serious inconvenience for any medium sized business which takes cash payments and a potential nightmare for any consumer who uses cash primarily.
For me it's sheer idiocy given that individuals and customers can just switch banks, which I certainly would be doing if I were a NatWest customer - the idiot decisions coming out of central office are worrying!