Faster Payments Service

Faster Payments Service (FPS) is a UK banking initiative to reduce payment times between different banks' customer accounts from three working days using the long-established BACS system, to a few hours. CHAPS already provides limited faster-than-BACS service (by close of business that day) for 'high value' transactions, while FPS is focused on the much larger number of payments of smaller values (the actual limits depend on the individual banks, with some allowing Faster Payments up to the value £100,000).

Nine banks and one building society, accounting for about 95 percent of payments traffic, initially committed to use the service. Other institutions could join later as full members (though as of late 2010 none have). For smaller organisations such as building societies and savings institutions, a deposit-only service is available through agency arrangements with a member. There had been few announcements regarding charges for Faster Payments. It was expected to be around £1-£5 for immediate payments by business users. No retail bank currently charges personal customers, nor is there currently any sign this will change.

FPS was officially launched on 27 May 2008 (though testing the previous week allowed users to process very small value (1p) transactions as 'faster payments') for non-scheduled, 'immediate' payments (about 5 percent of traffic) only, with access for future-dated payments and standing orders from 6 June. In practice the service was severely limited by the approach of individual member banks to its adoption (see Implementation). A general online Sort Code Checker was made available by APACS shortly ahead of launch, which shows whether a specific sort code is able to receive Faster Payments.