Revenue withdrew the ‘Online Banking’ payment option on the Form 11 ROS payment screen on 12 October 2020. Taxpayers who used this option in the last 12 months should have received a notification of the change through their ROS inbox. A phone campaign was also conducted to advise frequent payers using this option of alternative online methods.

Payments received via this payment option are effectively Electronic Funds Transfers (EFT) payments. Revenue confirmed the rational for this change, as follows:

1. The payments are not straight through payments for Revenue in the same way as Direct Debit or ROS Debit instructions. All EFT payments require manual intervention on receipt to identify the relevant customer and payment details. In peak times, and particularly for Pay and File, there can be delays in allocating the payment to the customer record on a timely basis.
2. To allocate the payment correctly, there is a dependency on the payment narrative provided by the taxpayer when making the payment. The narrative must include the reg number, tax and tax period to ensure accurate allocation of the payment. Where insufficient details are provided, payments remain unallocated indefinitely with no update to the customer record. This issue does not arise with Revenue’s online payment methods where the payment is automatically updated to the customer record once processed through the payment systems.
3. The payment method can often cause confusion for some taxpayers due to the misunderstanding that by selecting the ‘online banking’ option, Revenue will automatically deduct the payment from their account. Customer contact can then follow querying why the payment hasn’t been deducted from their account.

Revenue provided a note which details the changes and includes screenshots of old and new ROS screens.