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04/07/2025

CAF Bank service update

CAF Bank service update 

This week, we have continued to deploy fixes for online banking with one-time passcodes, bulk payments and downloading transactions.

The vast majority of customers are online and using the new service, and we have thousands of payments being made and received every day. But the fact is, this has been a stressful time for some of you, and I want to apologise to have caused that for our customers. 

More people are getting through to speak to us on the phones. This week, our call handlers spoke to more than 2,000 customers, but there are more of you who want to talk to us and we’re doing all we can to make this possible.  

We appreciate that some online banking tasks can be complicated to carry out and particularly the bulk payments process. Along with colleagues, I held a webinar this week to guide customers through this process. It was great to see many of you join and ask questions. For those that missed it, you can find a link to the recording here. We’re planning to host more live webinars to support customers. 

I can reassure you that we plan to make changes to improve the functionality of the service over the coming weeks and months so it’s more straightforward to use. We are regularly updating our resources page with the latest information on the service and answers to the common questions, in addition to our user guide and explainer videos. 

We really appreciate your ongoing patience. The work of our customers is central to everything we do at CAF Bank, and we’re committed to making this online service work smoothly for you.

Dina Henry New Headshot

Dina Henry

Chief Operating Officer, CAF Bank

Receiving one-time passcodes (OTPs)

We appreciate some customers continue to experience issues receiving one-time passcodes (OTPs) by text message. We continue to work with our service provider to improve the delivery of OTPs, including making some changes this week. We are sorry for the inconvenience that this has caused.  

We have heard that for some users, there are issues with OTPs not being recognised when entered online. We believe this issue can occur when the OTP entry field is clicked before you receive the OTP. This is causing customers to be unable to click on the ‘Continue’ button to proceed. While we carry out testing to identify the root cause, please wait for the OTP to arrive before clicking the OTP entry field.

Logging in for the first time?

If you have not yet logged in, you can activate your new online banking access by navigating to CAF Bank online. Click on the ‘Activate user access’ link, below the ‘Log in’ button, before entering the username we emailed to you and the temporary password sent by text message. For help finding your login details, please read our FAQs.  

If you have a smartphone, we recommend using the HID Approve app as a secure and flexible way to log in and authorise payments. The app works if you don't have internet access or a strong mobile signal. Once installed, you'll receive one-time passcodes directly in the app - or by text message if needed.

Direct debits

We are aware of an issue around the Direct Debit mandates for a small number of customers. We are working to resolve this as quickly as possible. 


Making payments 

Bulk payment cut-off time

Please note that as a temporary measure, bulk payment requests need to be fully authorised before 1pm on the working day they are to be paid. Individual payments can be paid after this time.

Check you have sufficient funds

Please make sure that there are enough funds available in your CAF Cash Account to make payments that are due the following day. 

User role and permissions

All payments require dual authorisation (by at least two approvers) on the new service. For more information on managing online user access, please see Section 3 of our user guide. 

We also recommend you watch our Approval Matrix video, a feature which gives you control over who can approve payments, for which accounts and their transaction authorisation limits. 

Webinar recording

This week, we held a webinar to guide customers through the process of creating and making bulk payments. The webinar was led by Richard Hunt, CAF Bank’s Director of Customer and Lending, with an introduction from Dina Henry, our Chief Operating Officer and also covered topics such as one-time passcodes, managing beneficiaries and making single payments.

If you were unable to attend, you can watch it by clicking the link below.

Watch webinar

Viewing and downloading statements

Account statements

You can view your statements in online banking by clicking the main menu, then ‘My Accounts’ to expand the selection, and then choosing ‘Account Statements’. Statements should now be available to view here and can be downloaded as a PDF. To view previous years, please use the drop-down box.

We’re aware that Historical Transactions prior to the 6 June are not presented in date order, and as a result do not show the relevant account balance. Account balances are available and correct within the statement function, and each account has an additional statement ending on 6 June. These are available to view from the ‘Account Statements’ menu. The 6 June statement concludes with a 'Carried forward' balance which matches the 'Principal Adjustment' within the ‘Transactions’ screen.

To view or download transactions from 6 June onward, please visit the ‘Transactions’ screen. If you need to view a larger date range than presented, you can do this by using the search icon. This week, the number of transactions a user can download has been increased from 99 to 499.

We’re aware that there is an issue for a number of customers with how statements are showing the running balance when interest is credited. Please be assured this is a display issue only, and your balances are correct. We’re working on a fix to make sure these are displayed correctly. 

Online banking user guide

Our user guide provides an overview of the features of our online banking service and step-by-step instructions on how to manage your banking tasks. We will be regularly updating this as a resource for customers.

View our user guide

QuickBooks

We expect that customers will be able to reconnect their CAF Bank accounts to QuickBooks by Friday 11 July at the latest. We will update QuickBooks’ users when this function is available.  

In the meantime, some customers have been able to download a file of transactions to upload into QuickBooks. See Section 2 of our new user guide and QuickBooks' help section for further information.

Our contact details

If you have any questions or concerns, email us at cafbank@cafonline.org. Alternatively, call 03000 123 456. We’re open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm (excluding English bank holidays).

If you are having challenges managing your payroll, please select option 4 when calling us. This will direct you to a specialist team to help you. 

We are continuing to receive a high number of calls. While we have extra members of our customer service team available and arranged to add more, there still may be a longer wait than usual if you call us. We appreciate your ongoing patience.

Thank you for banking with us.

CAF Bank Limited is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority (Financial Services Register number: 204451).

CAF Bank Limited Registered office is 25 Kings Hill Avenue, Kings Hill, West Malling, Kent ME19 4JQ. Registered in England and Wales under number 1837656.