sending deposits via chaps vs Faster payment

anna42hmr

Hi, just looking for peoples comments/experiences with this, i appreciate traditionally people sent the deposits for a house purchase via chaps, but the increase of online banking and payment limits etc means it is now easier to send the money via online FP instead.

I am (hopefully) now near to exchange and completion and from previous conversations with my sol she will be looking for the 10% prior to exchange and the remaining deposit prior to completion rather than in one go. I am putting paying a deposit of 29K in total (so 10% will be £10,995, remaining £18,005) therefore individually they are under my online banking payment limit.

Has any one on here sent the deposits via online banking faster payments? would you recommend it or was there any problems? or is Chaps still the best way to go?

Peronihull

I am debating this at the moment. I have a 15k limit on faster payments so to transfer my funds I will need at least 2 transactions.

For me chaps made sense because it meant that the money would be guaranteed to reach at a given date or time. Whilst FP also has something similar it only applies if the recipient is within the scheme. Whilst most are, it would be just my luck that something would go wrong.

I also wanted the assurances that the money would end up in the correct location. Rather than be at the risk of me making a mistake online.

Finally the swing vote was that some banks if not all monitor FP payments and specifically larger ones and subject them to additional fraud checks which could add delays. The only way to avoid this in my case is thru using chaps (as is designed for this) and thought for the sake of £25... I'd rather avoid any hassle...

I'm not looking forward to my bank being cleared out though... took me ages to save up!

System

Never done it but one drawback I see is that attempting to do it via FP could result in the money being held as anti-laundering checks are done on such a large sum.

At least with CHAPS it is a pre-arranged transfer that the bank are fully aware of and will go straight through.

davidmcn

Never encountered problems with faster payments being held up, either for my own or clients' money - any security measures are more likely before the transfer instruction is accepted eg requiring a phone call rather than online.

tom9980

I did a 30k faster payment with no issue last year.

ERICS_MUM

I believe (but stand to be corrected), that Faster Payments rules say the money must hit the payee account by close of business on the next business day at the latest. So payment cannot be guaranteed to be received on the day the payment is made.

Personally I'd want my solicitor to be responsible for the payment so they would be responsible for sorting any problems with it.

I know CHAPS fees are quite high but in the grand scheme of things it's a drop in the ocean and I wouldn't want the worry of making payment myself.

Good luck - be happy in your new home !

Old_Git

some banks charge for using chaps some dont .I paid £83,000 via chaps using santander who dont charge .I had the usually questions about where the money cane from but straight forward transaction.

Vampgirl

We transferred everything to our solicitor via FP and it worked fine. We had to split it into multiple transactions due to the limit on Faster Payments, but that worked out pretty well actually because the first payment was an odd amount only just over the threshold so we just transferred the small amount as a test first.

pjread

I used FP without issue, but...

Old_Git wrote: »

some banks charge for using chaps some dont .I paid £83,000 via chaps using santander who dont charge .I had the usually questions about where the money cane from but straight forward transaction.

Is that true, Santander don't charge for CHAPS? Their website seems to indicate it's £25.

bouicca21

I used FP for completion monies but fortunately had the sense to check with the two banks concerned that it would not be held up by fraud checks.

As a result of my enquiries, I found that despite their online and in branch advice the advertised limits were misleading and that an attempt to transfer an unusually large amount would trigger an enquiry. As a result I made arrangements to make the FP in branch, taking ID with me. All went smoothly.

BlaEm

I just went in to my branch both times to transfer the deposit and the balance, which were both over the online FP limit - I needed one form of ID as I didn't have a bank card (transferring from an online savings account). No issues, no charges and was cleared within the hour.
Appreciate not everyone lives or works near their bank branch but it certainly avoided any potential delays r.e. fraud checks.