Why Tellers Ask About Your Transactions (2024)

FAQs

Why Tellers Ask About Your Transactions? ›

Possible examples of transactions that might prompt questions from a teller include: Transactions (deposits AND withdrawals) involving an unusually large amount of cash. Large dollar deposits to typically lower balance accounts. Transactions on new accounts with little history to evaluate.

Purpose of the Banking Protocol

This is in place because financial institutions want to protect you and your money to keep you safe from scams, fraud and financial crime. These questions can feel intrusive, but they are there to safeguard you and your money.

Bank tellers can't see your exact purchases, only the amount of money spent and from what merchant the purchase was made. However, the merchant name can sometimes give away what you purchased.

One of your banker's daily roles is to monitor activity and ensure nothing weird or fishy happens to your account. One main way that these professionals accomplish this is by asking questions about the how and why behind certain transactions.

The bank may be asking for additional information because federal law requires banks to complete forms for large and/or suspicious transactions as a way to flag possible money laundering. These forms go to the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network ("FinCEN").

Can bank tellers see your account balance? Bank tellers can see your account balance, including money coming in and going out. However, they cannot see what specifically you spent your money on.

Who Is It Safe to Give My Bank Account Numbers To? You can usually provide bank account numbers without safety concerns to your employer, tax-filing services, payment and money transfer services, trusted relatives and friends, and companies that receive automatic bill payments from you.

Banks know what you spend your money on, and they can sell that information. There's a powerful new player watching what you buy so it can tailor product offerings for you: the bank behind your credit or debit card.

Yes, a bank can see all transactions occurring in your accounts. This allows them to provide account balances, statements, fraud monitoring, and other services. The transaction history is accessible to bank staff through the core banking system.

"We don't typically judge you on your account balance," one bank teller began. "We'll usually just either envy you or feel genuinely bad for you, especially if you're a really nice person.

Why do banks ask why you are depositing money? ›

Have you ever wondered why bank tellers often ask questions about your transaction? They are doing it for very good reasons! An important part of the teller's job is to protect customers by watching for potential fraud. Some transactions may require verification of identification, which is a government regulation.

You can also go over the manager's head and file a complaint about the teller. Write out everything you can remember. If anyone else was with you, ask them to give a statement. See if that makes a difference.

1 Cash handling errors

Cash handling errors are one of the most frequent and serious mistakes that tellers can make. They can occur when counting, dispensing, receiving, or balancing cash. Some common causes of cash handling errors are distraction, fatigue, stress, or lack of training.

Withdrawals over $10,000 may trigger Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing red flags and cause the bank to ask questions about your cash. These should be pretty easy to answer and leave with your money. For withdrawals under $10,000 there is less reason for the bank to want to know why you want your own cash.

Lenders typically primarily care about your income sources and payment patterns, savings and expenditure patterns, credit history, and assets and liabilities, as well as the property you're purchasing and its valuation.

From calculating how likely you are to file for bankruptcy to the percentage of your spending that goes to discretionary items, banks aren't only looking to assess a customer's financial riskiness, but they're also looking for ways to sell more products.

Their main concern is to stop money laundering. That's why they have various rules as KYC (Know Your Customer) and other stuff. Banks ask for the purpose of the wire transfer because they have to know the reason you're sending / receiving money.

Anti-Money Laundering – Extensive regulations require banks to monitor transactions for suspicious activity that could indicate money laundering or terror financing.

When such information is available, it is easier for the bank to identify and prevent suspicious transactions in the accounts, thus protecting customer funds and preventing possible financial crime, money laundering, terrorist financing or non-compliance with sanctions.

Typically, the bank has a team of investigators responsible for investigating suspicious activity that comes up. At a high-level, it involves detecting instances of potential fraud and escalating these cases to investigators who can determine whether it was fraud and, ideally, what type of fraud has occurred and how.