New speedy system for bank transfers launched; account to account in under 2 hours

Graham1

redrabbit29 wrote: »

Can someone clarify... are they charging for this service? E.g. if I transfer money now from say HSBC->halifax will I get charged for it?

No, HSBC are not charging for sending (nor Halifax for receiving), but you have to wait until next Tuesday to be able to send more than £20 per transaction.

Since Halifax will not do sending by this method until August/September we will have to wait and see.

Mikeyorks

dc wrote: »

How on earth can they possibly justify charging for receiving money???? :rolleyes:

They can't ... but they could justify charging for sending money ... which is the question. I'm surprised none of the Banks have yet declared their hand at levying a charge for the 'immediate' element of FP. Which gives you CHAPS speed at (so far) no cost. But I doubt any would chance their arm at attempting to charge for the SO element of FP.

Milarky

Mikeyorks wrote: »

They can't ... but they could justify charging for sending money ... which is the question. I'm surprised none of the Banks have yet declared their hand at levying a charge for the 'immediate' element of FP. Which gives you CHAPS speed at (so far) no cost. But I doubt any would chance their arm at attempting to charge for the SO element of FP.

Northern Bank (N.I.) is charging customers £5 a shot but only in branches in office hours - a sort of poor man's CHAPS -so it might just be a temporary administrative thing and I suspect the staff aren't too busy with that one. If you were doing it at home later - assuming they make the service available through 'other channels' it is less likely they would charge - or that the charge should be anything like £5.

Another thing occurs. Egg, for instance can recieve but not yet send FPs. Assuming the charging structure (by FP of the banks) is based on 'sender pays' then an asymmetric advantage arises for any 'member' which does not presently allow payments to be made from them. This situation can't persist (the system would be broken before it left the ground) so surely all members (etc) must be under some kind of obligation to FP to fully participate?

As to whether we will eventually be charged and dance of the seven veils responses of the banks - that is just unacceptable at this stage. If they were going to charge customers for this they should have made that plain to (for example) the OFT Taskforce responsible for its introduction. Remember, they were only asked to come up with an 'ELLE' which would have been simpler, cheaper (for the infrastructure required) and, above all, quicker to have produced than this eight-year old hatchling....

Graham1

When comparing to CHAPS remember that CHAPS is a RTGS (real-time-gross-settlement) system whereas the faster payment method is a net settlement system (meaning everything still "clears" at the end of the day, even though you "see" the money in your account almost immediately).

If lots of people start receiving and sending the same day they potentially have intra-day overdrafts, which traditionally banks have not charged for (since all accounting is done overnight). But this might not always be the case.

darlofc

I transferred from natwest to hsbc last night and was there before i could log in to hsbc to check. A good system long overdue lets just hope they don't start charging to use it. In regards to banks losing loads in interest sitting on money for 3-4 days, surely it works the other way too as they will have any money transferred to them quicker to do with whatever they do with it while we're not using it.

Turtle

first direct is £20 at moment, then up to full £10k from Tuesday 3 June. FP can't be guaranteed same day however so anything that must be done that day should still go through CHAPS, like someone said earlier. There is no 10k limit with FD for BACS unlike some other instituations, in fact I believe you can transfer up to 1p less than a million. There will be no charge for an FP.

By the way, for well over a year fd have paid interest on funds transfered to external accounts for 3 working days after it's left the account, ie until it hits the other account. So, they haven't been making money out of BACS in the same way as everyone else. I think I am right in saying they are the only bank to have adopted this stance and surprisingly I think most people will be unaware. You'd think it would have been a big selling point for them!

gt94sss2

Turtle wrote: »

By the way, for well over a year fd have paid interest on funds transfered to external accounts for 3 working days after it's left the account, ie until it hits the other account. So, they haven't been making money out of BACS in the same way as everyone else. I think I am right in saying they are the only bank to have adopted this stance

HSBC (First Directs parent) also does the same but I agree its pretty rare to find a bank which does..

Regards
Sunil

MarkyMarkD

garryhq wrote: »

This is the reply I received from A&L on the 19th May.
I asked why a simple internal credit transfer between my two A&L current accounts took 5 days, 3 days longer than an external debit transfer taking only two days, when both transactions were made online within minutes of each other.

Thank you for your further e-mail regarding transfers between current accounts.
Unfortunately, due to the way our systems process, transfers between existing Alliance & Leicester current accounts can take up to three clear working days.
We are always looking for ways to improve the service we offer to all our customers and appreciate the time you have taken to contact us.
We have forwarded your comments to the relevant department for consideration, to see if it would be possible to decrease these timescales in any futher changes and/or enhancements to our systems.
We do hope you find the above information useful. If you have any further questions the answers may be found in the Help section, found on the login page of the customer website. If you can not find the information you are looking for please do not hesitate to contact us again.
Kind regards
Customer Services
Alliance & Leicester plc
Date: 19 May 2008

I'm not sure that I understand why you suffered a 5-day delay. But anyway, A&L are replacing their horrible old banking systems within the next 3 years with a new system which will enable instant A&L > A&L transfers.

But as Faster Payments will be effective ages before that, you'll be able to make such a payment via FP anyway.

appleblossom

Sorry to ask but just to clarify (can't get my head round it atm as spent all last night in hospital with poorly son and am shattered!),

I purchase items on behalf of work using my dads credit card, I then get work to Bacs the payment to my Natwest Account from their Barclays, I then do a tranx to my dads lloyds. This can take over a week to get from work to dad, does this mean with the new system it can all be done in the space of a day?

Thanks.x

laney66

I transfered £25 from my NatWest to my Citi account yesterday but no sign of it so far. These are both listed by the op as being able to send and receive FP.