APACS: Countdown to rollout of UK’s new payments service

With just a few days to go until the launch of the new Faster Payments Service, APACS, the UK payments association, has today (22nd May 2008) issued new materials to help customers wishing to benefit from the service, as it begins its rollout on 27th May.

APACS has produced a new, downloadable advice guide, How to use the Faster Payments Service, along with an online easy-to-use sort code checker www.canipayfaster.co.uk. Customers can input any UK sort code to check whether it is able to receive Faster Payments. More sort codes will be added over the next few months as the service is rolled out. All these materials are available from www.apacs.org.uk.

In readiness for the launch of the new service on 27th May, over the last week participating members of the new Faster Payments Service have been making live transactions through the new infrastructure, sending and receiving payments in pennies. This final stage of testing comes at the end of extensive testing in a non-live environment.

Paul Smee, APACS Chief Executive says, “The final part of this enormously complex project has been to test the new system in a live environment. This week hundreds of penny payments have successfully been made between the participating banks. The Service is now ready to start being rolled out to customers next Tuesday. Although the initial rollout will be gradual, and some customers may not be using the new service immediately, we expect that in the coming months this will ramp up to enable large numbers of customers to benefit from it. After such substantial investment by the industry we’d like, in time, to see the new Faster Payments Service being used for all of the UK’s internet, phone and standing order payments.”

The Faster Payments Service will be introduced in a phased rollout, with founding banks gradually implementing their own plans to deliver the service to their customers. Customers will be informed by their banks when they are able to use the service.


ENDS

For further information contact the APACS Press Office on 020 7711 6316.

The thirteen founding members are: Abbey, Alliance & Leicester, Barclays, Citi, Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banks (National Australia Group), Co-operative Bank, HBOS, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Nationwide Building Society, Northern Bank (Danske Bank), Northern Rock, Royal Bank of Scotland Group (including NatWest and Ulster Bank). VocaLink, a separate service company, is to provide the infrastructure for the Faster Payments Service.

Currently internet and phone payments account for just 2% of interbank automated payment volumes, but these are growing rapidly as customers increasingly turn to them instead of more traditional payment methods such as cheques. Standing orders account for 6% of interbank automated payments. The new system is being built to cater for the large volume increases projected for the future. The remaining 92% of interbank automated payments are 'bulk' transactions generated by organisations and businesses both large and small and are: Direct Debits, used to pay utility bills, life and general insurance premiums and various subscriptions; Bacs Direct Credits, used for salary payments, pensions, and state benefits; and CHAPS payments.

The logo for the Faster Payments Service is available on request from press@apacs.org.uk.

For further information and resources, visit www.apacs.org.uk.