Quick question: Do you have to give out your name along with your sort code and account number for someone to deposit money in your account?

[VladmirsPoutine]

If not then surely they'd see your name anyway on their statement? Just trying to resolve a query I faced at work today. (I don't work in a bank), so fear not

But Dappled, that's a problem that IT could solve. If I make a payment to "John Smith", it's not beyond the wit of computer programmers to generate "the account name corresponding to the sort code and account number you have given does not contain 'John' or 'Smith' - do you want to proceed?"*

Which doesn't help when I want to transfer to Kate Smith. Turns out she's changed her bank account to her married name of Wilson and her full name is Catherine. But is it Catherine or Kathryn or Katherine? If I try to use "Kate Smith" and she's actually Catherine Wilson it's going to tell me there's no match.

Dappled - it does help. If the bank says "do you want to proceed?" then you can either think "of course, I know Kate actually uses Wilson for this account, so it's fine" or "hmm, I've never paid to this account before, I'll just give Kate a call and check". It gives an opportunity for sensible people to catch an error, especially if it's an account you've never paid to before.

As it happens, about 20 minutes ago, I paid into the account of an acquaintance, who only sent me the sort code and account number, so I just put her surname in the account name line and it went through. If we were in a world where a message came back that the name didn't match anything on the account, I would have been surprised and got back in touch with the acquaintance to query it.

I make monthly transfers for DDs rent. I do know her landlords name as it is on the contract but for the transfers I have sort code and account number only. It appears on my statement with the name I allocated to the payment which is “DDs rent”.

The name wasn't checked a few years ago when my landlady gave me one digit wrong for her account number and my payment went into the wrong account!
I would have assumed there would have been some cross referencing but apparently not - and the bank insisted that as it wasn't their mistake we were dependent on the goodwill of the mistaken payee to get the money back!
(Luckily she was honest and gave it straight back though the bank told me she didn't have to!)

Yeah the name isn't relevant at the moment. You can usually put a reference in there though that shows up on their/ your statement. If it's a friend then "Dildo Refund" works well