To make sure you never miss out on your favourite NEW stories, we're happy to send you some reminders

Click 'OK' then 'Allow' to enable notifications

Bank Is Suspending People Over Silly Bank Transfer Captions

Bank Is Suspending People Over Silly Bank Transfer Captions

It's impossible to be an adult when it comes to captioning a payment reference to a friend.

Ciara Sheppard

Ciara Sheppard

What is a bank transfer to a friend without leaving a wildly indecent and potentially incriminating payment reference?

From thanking them for their - *cough* - services, to acknowledging their sizeable order on dildo.com, we've all gone to extreme lengths to embarrass our pals when they get their bank statement through the post.

But while most of our captions are harmless (and very immature) fun, one bank has deemed the issue serious enough to introduce suspensions for more worrying messages.

We've all opened our online banking to be met with a dodgy caption from a friend (
Pexels)

Commonwealth Bank has introduced new rules after completing an audit of over 8,000 customers. The Australian bank found that there were a number of low-value transfer amounts that had 'potentially offensive or abusive' captions.

While it's probably clear which captions were inoffensive banter, CommBank had more of a problem with the ones which seemed to 'contact and harass certain individuals'.

Commonwealth Bank is one of Australia's main banks (
Wikimedia Commons)

Catherine Fitzpatrick, CBA General Manager of Community & Customer Vulnerability, said in a statement: "After noticing disturbing messages in the account of a customer experiencing domestic and family violence, we conducted an analysis to better understand the problem.

"We were horrified by both the scale and the nature of what we found. All genders were sending and receiving these messages, but nature ranged from fairly innocuous jokes using profanities to serious threats and clear references to domestic and family violence."

She added: "Our customers should always feel safe using digital banking. These changes will ensure that all customers can continue to enjoy the benefits of digital banking in a safe and secure way and represents our first step to address the issue of technology-facilitated abuse."

Users who leave inappropriate bank transfer captions could be suspended by Commbank (
Shutterstock)

In response, Commbank has since introduced its Acceptable Use Policy. The policy allows the company to stop bank transfers or suspend account holders if they are found to have defamed, harassed, or threatened someone in their payment reference.

While it's only the Aussie bank to have introduced measures like this, it may be something UK banks look to mirror in their own policy-making - so maybe think twice before sending that risqué caption.

Errr, we think we'll stick to 'dinner' and 'wine' in future, then...

Featured Image Credit: Unsplash

Topics: Life News, Life