Why (and how) do councils still use BACS?

firefox1956

Hazzanet wrote: »

My charges are about £2.50 for an FP, and less than £0.05 for a BACS credit.

Depends on what you can negotiate when you get to enterprise level, which is what a council is likely to be on.

Blimey........
All the BACS & Faster Payments on my business bank account are free !!

Hazzanet

firefox1956 wrote: »

Blimey........
All the BACS & Faster Payments on my business bank account are free !!

I do process > 2m transactions (mix of DD and credits) a month so I suppose they want paying for the amount of work I make them do.

Very rarely use FP.

paragon909

Nothing wrong with bacs payments, They only take 24 hours now to complete.

So if my local council paid me by bacs today that would appear in my account on the next bank update.

Well thats how ive found bacs payments.

cifpower

firefox1956 wrote: »

Never heard of that one before......
You must have a rather odd business bank account

I preform the BACS runs where I work. Single faster payments cost us 30p each. A BACS run costs £3.00 for the batch and 10p for each recipient. Our batches normally contain 25-50 customers.

It also helps with the cash flow as the monies don't actually leave our account until the day of credit. So if we have days with large direct debits coming out, we can schedule the BACS payments to leave after - or on a day in which we receive large credits. This has the added benefit of leaving maximum cash in our treasury account.

firefox1956

Hazzanet wrote: »

I do process > 2m transactions (mix of DD and credits) a month so I suppose they want paying for the amount of work I make them do.

Very rarely use FP.

Ha......I should think so !!!

dr_adidas01

Have to agree with other it costs us a lot more money to do faster payments than to do a batch run of BACS payments.

At the end of the day its all down to costs and nearly everyone will choose the cheapest way to make payments.

InsideInsurance

dr_adidas01 wrote: »

At the end of the day its all down to costs and nearly everyone will choose the cheapest way to make payments.

Its a fair way from nearly everyone, having a USP can be of use and certainly a load of Umbrella companies initially made a big thing to attract contractors that you get your pay on the same day they receive it because they use Faster Pay.

Of cause you dont have any choice of which council to claim Housing Benefit from (at least if you arent committing fraud) and so a USP on speed of payment isnt required.

colsten

People would be up in arms if benefits would have to be cut, or taxes raised, in order to fund the changes necessary to councils' systems to replace BACS with something else.

Also, the FP infrastructure would potentially collapse if it had to process billions of transactions, potentially leading to delays in people receiving their benefits. Imagine the outcry.