Introduction to Faster Payments Service
What is the Faster Payments Service?
The Faster Payments Service is a new payment system, which was launched within the UK banking industry on 27 May 2008.
The system is designed to speed up the transfer of customers’ electronic
payments between banks and building societies. The existing payment
systems can take up to three days to process these transactions; the Faster Payments Service aims to process them in near real time*.
The Faster Payments Service consists of three types of payments:
- Standing Orders: regular fixed payments
- Future Dated Payments: one-off payments set for a date in the future
- Single Immediate Payments: one-off payments to be sent immediately
In order to process a Faster Payments transaction, both the sending and receiving banks/building societies (or their agents) must be members of the scheme.
When will the Faster Payments Service be available to Northern Rock customers?
Northern Rock has been able to receive all types of Faster Payments since 27 May 2008.
In order to ensure that the service runs smoothly and securely for our customers, we will be implementing the facility to send Faster Payments over the coming months.
Please visit this page regularly for updates.
further information
For further information about the Faster Payments Service, including a list of the other member banks and building societies, please visit the APACS website.
Alternatively, you can download the Your Questions Answered document, which is provided in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.
*Near real time means that the payee will receive the payment almost immediately after it leaves the original account. However, it may take up to two hours for the transaction to be processed; and dependent upon the other bank’s response, it may take up to 3 bank working days.