Keys Corner

This evening I transfered some money, using internet banking, from a Barclays Bank account in the UK to another Barclays Bank account in the UK. Here, in Germany, a funds transfer between different branches of the same bank is normally instantaneous. Imagine my surprise to receive the following message when I hit “confirm”:

Pay a Bill or Someone Step 2b of 4

Barclays to Barclays payments

Because the person you’ve chosen to pay has a Barclays account we need to do some extra checking.

These checks help us to protect your account from potentially fraudulent activity. As a result, your payment will be made on 07/07/2005.

Your current balance shown on your homepage will not be updated until this payment is made.

Good grief, can’t Barclays at location “A” trust Barclays at location “B”? The implication of the third sentence is that other banks are more trustworthy.

Is their computer system so full of security holes that they can’t manage an intrabank transfer without two days worth of checking?

The BBC reports:

Akira Haraguchi, 59, managed to recite the number’s first 83,431 decimal places, almost doubling the previous record held by another Japanese.

He had to stop three hours into his recital after losing his place, and had to start from the beginning…

Hats off to Mr. Haraguchi – I am ashamed to admit that I couldn’t even remember to take my company ID card to work with me twice last week, which meant I had to get my boss to sign a correction sheet for the time-keeping system, which works using the card.