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Understanding your balance

Regularly checking the balance of your bank account is a great way to stay on top of your finances. But it can also be quite confusing if you have many different payments going in and out each month.

To help you to know where you stand, here's a guide to some of the most common terms…

Pending transactions

When you log on to online banking or the HSBC Mobile Banking app, we'll show you any pending transactions for your account. These are payments or deposits which have not yet been debited from or credited to your account.

Pending transactions can include:

  • Direct Debits
  • debit card transactions
  • payments made by BACS (such as your salary)
  • cheques that haven't cleared yet

Bear in mind that some transactions can take several days to be processed, and till then, will show as pending.

Balance vs available balance

Your balance is the amount of money you have available in your account, or the amount by which you are overdrawn if you have an overdraft. This balance is calculated only through transactions that have been successfully debited from or credited to your current account.

You may notice a difference between your balance and your available balance. This is because your available balance takes into account some pending transactions - such as debit card purchases or payments which have not yet been processed.

Please pay careful attention to your available balance to ensure you don't spend more than you can afford, which could result in charges if you exceed your overdraft limit. 

Unrecognised transactions

A pending transaction may show something you don't recognise. A common reason for this might be that some stores or retailers show as different names on your account, which may cause some confusion.

If you are still unsure that a transaction is genuine, please contact us and we will help you to query it. 

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