Faster Payments from May 27 - confirmation from APACS

Biggles

theboylard wrote: »

But from the volume of transactions done by BACS for 2007, that equates to £3.7 Trillion, processing over 90 million transactions per day, somewhere there is a truckload of money that someone is earning interest on

Yes, but the vast majority of those are payroll payments, pensions and the like (where BACS is operated directly by the user) and these are transferred simultaneously from paying bank a/c to payee bank a/c on Day 3 of the BACS cycle. There is no 'float'.

It's only when online banking comes into it (where we only operate BACS indirectly) that the bank removes the money from your account on Day 1 or 2 of the BACS cycle, thus earning a little interest for a day or two before it ends up in the payee a/c on Day 3. This would only be a very small proportion of the £3.7 trillion (or whatever).

MarkyMarkD

And standing orders, and over-the-counter bill payments.

It's direct debits and direct credits which don't have float.

theboylard

So you're saying that with the £3.7 Trillion moved last year, processing over 90 million transactions per day, that we are only losing a little bit out of all that?

I'd be happy with that little bit!!!

Now then, assuming that a trillion has 12 noughts (American I know, should really be 18 but I'm feeling generous), using the figures I've quoted directly from BACS site - if we only had 0.01% of all those luvvverrrly numbers floating about as yer proper online/telephone and standing orders like, then the banks are benefiting from interest on roughly £370,000,000 worth of our money - but I would realisticly expect it to be nearer 3-4% as a minimum.
And I'd like to think they use English Trillions too!

YorkshireBoy

I think you're misreading the figures.

The £3.7 trillion relates to purely Direct Debit and Direct Credit transactions...both of which have zero float.

Furthermore, the 90m transactions was a "peak" for one day at the end of November last year, not an average per day.

http://www.bacs.co.uk/BACS/Corporate/Corporate+overview/

Chadsman

I the week I sent a payment from an RBS account to a LTSB account and it arrived the same day :eek:

medic1978

Why is there still a need for 2 separate systems? FPS and BACS?

Why can't all inter-bank transactions be FPS and same day?

smithja

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

I think you're misreading the figures.

The £3.7 trillion relates to purely Direct Debit and Direct Credit transactions...both of which have zero float.

Furthermore, the 90m transactions was a "peak" for one day at the end of November last year, not an average per day.

http://www.bacs.co.uk/BACS/Corporate/Corporate+overview/

Hi

I dont think the real issue here is these exact very large numbers but that the number of payments made on a daily basis by BACS initiated by customers must have increased to a very large number since the inception of telephone banking and internet banking now quite some time ago (actually you could go back to when people first became able to make bill payments on ATM's, it was very popular at both the TSB and Halifax and when the automated telephone banking services were introduced were you had to have a tone pad to operate it if you still had yet to buy a touchtone phone).

For people between a particular age range, who are not technophobic, I think you will find many have not set foot in a bank to stand in a queue a few times a month to pay their bills using BGC's in a very long time. So the actual amount of interest accrued by the banks daily must be still be vast.

James

steady__eddie

Don't know if this is relevant or not to the discussion but anyway here goes. I have just received my Nationwide cc statement, the balance is paid by direct debit from my Flexaccount. I notice that the payment date is shown as being 31 May 2008, my calendar informs me that this date appears to fall on a Saturday. Having checked my statements going back 3 years, I note that no payment date has ever fallen on a weekend before. Can this event be put down to statistical probability or is it indeed tied to events due to occur on the 27th ?
I have read (and re read) this thread and understood most of it but only being of small stature, I am forced to admit that some of it did go over my head.

Lokolo

Considering 31st May hasn't happened yet no-one can be sure.

However, I reckon it will come out on the Monday. This is what happens with my O2 bill, it says 'Blah Blah will be taken out of your account on, or around, the #th of Jan/Feb etc.'

MarkyMarkD

smithja wrote: »

For people between a particular age range, who are not technophobic, I think you will find many have not set foot in a bank to stand in a queue a few times a month to pay their bills using BGC's in a very long time. So the actual amount of interest accrued by the banks daily must be still be vast.

I never, ever, ever pay any bill using BGC. Losing money on bill payments because of BGC "float" is a personal choice - which can be completely avoided by paying bills by DD.