Faster Payments
Posted: Tue 27 May, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Own Business, Work-related |3 Comments »At long last, the banks are introducing a faster payment system for phone and internet banking. I’ve often wondered how they can continue to get away with claiming it takes three days for money to transfer between banks/accounts – and the truth is, they really couldn’t continue to get away with it.
So they’re now gradually phasing in this new Faster Payments Service – which will (eventually) mean that you can do transfers on the same day, rather than waiting three days. Money leaves your account immediately, and is in the recipient bank account later that day.
Initially it’s just being trialled on smaller amounts – I think the average ceiling is about £20 at first – before it ends up going up to the maximum transaction value of £10,000 in a few months time. If you want to check whether your payment recipient can handle faster payments, you can check the sort-code on this site.
I wonder how this will affect the entire BACS and CHAPS system over time? It’ll be nice to be able to have same-day transfers without paying the extra £30+ for a CHAPS payment, that’s for sure.
I’d personally like to thank the banks for catching up. It IS 2001 after all… ohh wait…
Absolutely.
Still, at least they’re managing to do it before we hit the 2010s – which was the timescale I was expecting…
On similar lines… shouldn’t solicitors be made to pay interest on the often huge amounts of money they sit on for days/weeks at a time in client accounts?