Faster Payment Standing Orders? (Lloyds and Halifax)

fablad75

I have three Reward accounts with Halifax and three Lloyds Vantage accounts.

I have standing orders set up with each of them, transferring £1000 on the 10th of each month from Lloyds to Halifax, and back again from Halifax to Lloyds on the 15th.

(I don't want to do it manually in case I forget, and this saves me a lot of time).

I've just noticed that these standing orders are really, really quick - the money leaves and arrives on the same day. Are these Faster Payments? I don't have any experience with FPs so I don't know how they work.

If so, I'm thinking of shortening the gap between the standing order, so my money runs back to Lloyds quicker. Maybe Lloyds - Halifax on 10th and Halifax-Lloyds on 13th (in case the 10th falls on a Sat).

premierfella

I personally would advise against it unless you have overdraft facilities on your Halifax accounts to cover the £1000 standing orders back to Lloyds TSB.

Although Lloyds Faster Payments have improved since they returned recently, and the FP limits have risen to £1000 on Lloyds TSB standing orders, the standing orders are not guaranteed to go via Faster Payments. You need to cover the possibility of the SOs defaulting to BACS, which the overdraft at Halifax would do.

anna42hmr

i personally have standing orders set up from lloyds into halifax on the 18th of the month and so far for the last few months they have always been in halifax on the 18th.

but any so's i have on halifax account i have to leave halifax on 19th however on my 3 rewards i have small overdraft limits to cover the outgoing so's to be on the safe side (ie one of the reward accounts has a monthly standing order out of £50 so have an overdraft limit of £55, another have SO's out totalling £250, so have an od of £255 on that account just to be safe)

it would be risky to have an so of £200 in on the same day £200 out as would depend what time that lloyds send the money to halifax, if there is ever a problem with halifax receiving or lloyds sending payments, and also wether halifax process debits or credits first

fablad75

I have no OD on two of the 'spare' Reward Accounts. The third is actually my main account, and at one point they automatically raised my OD limit to some ridiculous amount - several thousands! - which I subsequently declined and reduced to about £1500.

I guess I should just leave it as it is - interest on £3000 (total for the three accounts) for just a few days isn't going to come to much anyway.