What Is Banyan UK on My Bank Statement?
Banyan UK on your statement is Banyan Bar & Kitchen — a chain of cocktail bars and restaurants operated by the Leeds-based group Arc Inspirations. The charge is a bar or restaurant bill, and it is nearly always somewhere in the North of England.
Why it reads as a stranger: the venue name and the group name are the same, but the town is missing. People remember "that cocktail bar in York" rather than the brand, and the statement gives them a company name with no location attached.
At a glance
- Brand
- Banyan Bar & Kitchen
- Operator
- Arc Inspirations, Leeds
- First opened
- Harrogate, 2006
- Sister brands
- Manahatta, Box
- Where
- Mainly Northern England
- Typical charge
- Food, drinks or a deposit
Who they are
Arc Inspirations is a Leeds bar and restaurant group founded in 1999 by Martin Wolstencroft. It runs three brands — Banyan Bar & Kitchen, Manahatta and Box — across roughly 18 sites.
The first Banyan opened in Harrogate in 2006. The brand has since expanded to Leeds, York, Manchester, Newcastle, Ilkley and other northern cities. In 2022 the group secured a £19m investment from BGF to fund further expansion.
It is an established, well-documented hospitality business. Nothing about the name on your statement is unusual.
Why the charge might not look familiar
Bar and restaurant charges are among the most commonly misremembered on a statement, for reasons that have nothing to do with fraud.
The bill was split, or someone else's round went on your card. Group bookings and shared tabs are the single most common explanation.
A tab was left open. Bars that hold your card against a tab charge the final total later, sometimes the next day, which puts the date a day out from your memory of the night.
A deposit for a booking. Banyan takes deposits for larger tables. That charge lands weeks before you actually visit, which is why it stands out as unexplained.
Service charge or a card fee can appear as a second, smaller entry close to the main one.
Is it a scam?
No. There is no known scam operating under this name. Arc Inspirations is a real hospitality group with a long trading history, and Banyan is its longest-running brand.
But a genuine company's name on your statement only tells you the payment reached a real business. It does not tell you that you made it. If nobody in your household has been to a Banyan, that is a separate question worth pursuing.
What the descriptor looks like
You may see it as BANYAN UK, with or without a town, and sometimes with a store or terminal number attached. Banks truncate descriptors differently, so the same charge can appear longer on a paper statement or in a CSV export than it does in your app.
If a town name is included, that is the fastest way to place the visit.
If you genuinely cannot account for it
Check the date against a weekend or an evening. Bar charges cluster there, and the day of the week alone often jogs the memory.
Ask anyone who shares the account. A partner's night out, or a card saved on a family member's phone, explains most of these.
Check for a deposit weeks earlier. If you have a booking coming up, the charge may be the deposit rather than a visit.
Still nothing? Treat it as an unrecognised card payment. Your bank must refund an unauthorised transaction by the end of the next working day, and your liability before you report is capped at £35.
If you want the money back for a genuine visit
If the charge is yours but wrong — double-billed, the wrong amount, or a tab charged twice — contact the venue first. Hospitality billing errors are usually resolved directly and quickly.
If the venue will not help, a card claim is the fallback: chargeback on a debit card, or Section 75 on a credit card if the amount was over £100.
🛡️ Build your recovery plan
Tick what applies to you. The order below is deliberate: most of these organisations will ask for your Action Fraud reference number, so doing it in this sequence saves you making the same call twice.
Nothing ticked yet: the steps below are the ones that apply to everyone. Tick a box above to add the rest.
- 1
Report it to Action Fraud and get your crime reference number
Action Fraud: the national reporting centre for fraud
- Onlinereportfraud.police.uk
- Phone0300 123 2040
Do this second, and do it before you contact anyone else. Almost every organisation in this list (lenders, credit reference agencies, debt collectors) will ask for the crime reference number Action Fraud gives you, and without it you end up making the same call twice. It also creates the official record you'll rely on if you have to dispute anything later. Expect an update within 28 working days, though that's about the investigation, not about clearing your name; that part is on you and starts now.
Have ready: What happened and roughly when · Any account or reference numbers involved
- 2
Get all three credit reports and read every line
Experian, Equifax and TransUnion
- Experian0800 013 8888
- Equifax0800 014 2955
- TransUnion0330 024 7574
All three, not one. Lenders report to different agencies, so a fraudulent account can sit on one file and be invisible on the others: checking a single report is the most common way people miss the second and third account. You're looking for accounts you didn't open, searches you didn't authorise, and addresses linked to your name that you've never lived at. That last one matters more than it sounds: a linked address you don't recognise is often how the fraud was set up in the first place.
Have ready: Your addresses for the last six years
- 3
Add a CIFAS protective registration
CIFAS: the UK fraud prevention service
- Onlinecifas.org.uk
- Phone0330 460 9601
This puts a warning flag against your name in the National Fraud Database, so member organisations run extra identity checks before granting credit in your name. It costs £30 and lasts two years. It does not affect your credit score, and it doesn't touch accounts you already hold, but it will make your own applications slower, which is the trade-off. If someone has your details, that's usually a trade worth making. Note that not every application is checked against the database, so treat it as a strong deterrent rather than a lock.
- 4
Check you're on the electoral register at the right address
Your local council
A quick one that's worth doing while you're here. The electoral roll is one of the main ways lenders confirm you live where you say you do, and being missing from it both weakens your own applications and makes it easier for someone to claim your identity elsewhere.
- 5
Escalate if you get nowhere
Financial Ombudsman Service, or the ICO
- Financial Ombudsman0800 023 4567
- ICOico.org.uk
If a bank refuses to refund you, or a lender won't remove an entry it has accepted is fraudulent, complain to the firm first and give it eight weeks. After that, or as soon as you get a final response, take it to the Financial Ombudsman. It's free and its decisions bind the firm. Where the argument is specifically about inaccurate data staying on your credit file, the Information Commissioner's Office can also look at it. Both routes cost you nothing.
- 6
Close the door behind you
You
Change passwords on your email account first, not your banking: email is the master key, because it's where password resets land. Turn on two-factor authentication wherever it's offered. If documents were lost or stolen, report the passport or driving licence to the issuing body so it can be flagged. And set a reminder to re-check your credit reports in three months: fraudulent applications sometimes surface long after the original breach.
Contact details and process reflect Action Fraud, CIFAS, the credit reference agencies and National Debtline guidance for England and Wales. Scotland reports fraud through Police Scotland on 101 rather than Action Fraud; the rest of the process is the same. General information, not legal advice: free, independent help is available from National Debtline, Citizens Advice and StepChange.
