Who is BIG NUTS ASS?

I woke up and, as usual, checked the banking app for any updates or changes. There was a payment received.  Quite a major payment. It came from BIG NUTS ASS*.

BIG NUTS ASS*?

Who is BIG NUTS ASS*?

I have no idea. I rang the bank. That took a long time.

Due to coronavirus, we are experiencing difficulties with dealing with calls and it may take over an hour before we can talk to you

Eventually got through to a person who explained that BIG NUTS ASS* was a payment from America. A payment from whom? They had no idea. It’s a payment from BIG NUTS ASS*. But I was trying to find out who BIG NUTS ASS* is. Can you tell me? No.

So weird. I know what money is going out, but I’ve got this big payment coming in from BIG NUTS ASS* and no one can tell me who they are or what it’s for. I then get a message from a client. They tell me they just made payment of an invoice. The client’s name is the Bank International Group Networking Union Trust Society and Assocation. I didn't know they were called that, as I know them as the Bank International Group. The Bank International Group Networking Union Trust Society and Assocation is their full title.

I emailed them and asked: are you BIG NUTS ASS*? They told me they probably were, and that I should have received their payment. I told them I had.

BUTT.

Why and how is it that the bank can get away with such limited information in 2021? How and why is it that a bank can just say you’ve been paid by BIG NUTS ASS* and not provide or find the proper information? Why is it that I have to be a detective to work out what’s going on in my bank account? No wonder we have armies of people doing reconciliations and exception management.

Fact is that the bank, in 2021, should be able to show me who paid what, when. Why can’t they do that? Because their back office system was developed in the 1970s or before. Back then, with limited space and memory, everything was truncated.

Truncation. It was basically saying that this field in our records can only take 12 characters, so The Bank International Group Networking Union Trust Society and Assocation is shortened to BIG NUTS ASS*, purely for due to the nature of bank's historical internal record-keeping. And there is the issue: it was for the bank’s internal record-keeping. So, why are you showing me your internal record-keeping in my app? More, why are you using a 1970s developed system for 21st century banking? And then why are you showing this old, useless, truncated, internal system to me, as a customer?

It’s 2021. You should be able to show me a fully-enriched, digitally-immersed experience where, whenever anything happens in my account, you can show me everything about that moment. You can show me who, when, how and what happened. I don’t want to just see BIG NUTS ASS*; I want to see the Bank International Group Neworking Assocation sent you $10,000 from Chicago and click here for more detail.

I sit here and wonder whether anyone is really happy with 21st century banking, when it is obvious that 20th century banking is not fit for the 21st century?

And how would it be fit for 21st century banking? Oh, link via APIs to enriching each entry with who, how and where it came from. Ah! Challenger banks do that? Ah! Why am I still with my last century bank?