"One Working Day" for money to be credited?

Thanks for the quick reply Matthew, much appreciated. It's come through now. Perhaps it was the reference issue as you mentioned.

Hi r00lish67

During the FCA authorisation process, we had the FCA's specialist CASS (client money) team on site for a few days, reviewing every aspect of how we receive, manage and reconcile client money. In relation to debit card lender credits specifically, they mandated that funds must be cleared before allowing the client to use those funds. Otherwise, you could be allowing one client to trade with another client's funds (for example if the lender withdraws funds before they've actually been credited to the client account).

It typically takes around one working day for merchant acquirers to transfer funds to merchants (or platforms in this case) in relation to debit card payments, hence there is an unavoidable lag. This can be bypassed if the firm chooses to use its own funds to 'pre-fund' the client account until the funds clear, but in any case this pre-funding would need to take place before allowing the client to do anything with such funds.

I cannot comment on what other platforms are doing or whether or not this has been specifically approved by the FCA as compliant (noting full authorisation does not mean the FCA has reviewed and approved every key policy/process as compliant). In the case of rail ticket providers, they would not be subject to the FCA's CASS rules and therefore their obligations would not be directly comparable.

Acknowledged that this means the customer experience is not optimal, but hopefully at least you understand why we've taken this approach.

Chris from AC has always argued that this was the correct interpretation of the rules which is why AC has always rejected the debit card funding route.

Hi savernake

It can take slightly longer - the full reference sometimes doesn't come through until the following day in our banking system. In any case, this should be credited later this morning. Apologies for any inconvenience.

The guys in customer service will be pleased though...

I knew that transferring a cash isa into Lending Works IFISA would take a lot longer than the usual debit card transfer.  However, I was surprised that it took 6-7 weeks.  I've now noticed the small print of the original Nationwide ISA - '..we will transfer the money within the time stipulated by you or within 30 days of us receiving the request from your new ISA manager, whichever is the longer period'.  
30 days seems excessive and only applies to transferring into IFISAs.
It seems Lending Works were not at all tardy.  Plus, they kept me informed of the process and the matching to loans once the money was cleared was quick.

The banks generally seem to be feeling very unhelpful towards transfers to IFISAs, mostly it seems insisting on sending cheques which the take longer to clear also. I split a cash ISA into 4, and although there was some variation in how long the cash took to arrive in my IFISAs they were similarly long. When I later decided against one of these and transferred that money over (to LW and another) the transfers were noticeably quicker - in fact the last time the cash was in my LW ISA a week after I posted the form.