Faster Payments Experiences

amiehall

those ending in 0 and 1 are good for faster payments. i'm waiting for them to get round to 4

Viper_7

The FP system is a real time non-stop system for single on-line payments be them initiated over the phone or internet banking. Most payments are securely completed in a matter of seconds 24/7. The two hour message most banks put up is more a Transaction SLA

Standing orders are put through during the early hours. Monday - Thursday.

The roll-out of valid sort codes on the new system has been carefully rolled out to ensure the system is trouble free and to prevent the likes of Terminal 5 fiasco's!
Some banks only were set up to receive initially and/or capped payments and/or only offered the service a few hours a day.

Only the major banks are members of the new system as people have mentioned earlier but these make up in the main 90% of all on-line payments.

Third party agencies will also be joining such as utility companies so payments can be made immediately.
This is definitely the nail in the coffin for cheques and will make purchases between two parties so much easier - such as buying a car privately, cash is transfered immediately and the receiver can confirm etc.

The banks are losing a lot of money over this though as the payments are immediate, no more of the receiver holding onto the funds in a suspend account and waiting 3 days before moving them.
Will be interesting to see if this remains a free service or if they will cap the number of free payments per day and charge after that? So far all indications are is that it will be free, but as we all know the current case going through the courts over charging may put an end to free banking.
People will stop using BACs/CHAPs which do have a cost per transaction to this free instant payment service, will be interesting to see what happens.

Vipes

Milarky

The roll-out of valid sort codes on the new system has been carefully rolled out to ensure the system is trouble free and to prevent the likes of Terminal 5 fiasco's!

Urban myth?

The banks are losing a lot of money over this though as the payments are immediate, no more of the receiver holding onto the funds in a suspend account and waiting 3 days before moving them.

The 'float' was estimated at £30 million per annum. They managed to keep pocketing this every year money for eight years - the time between the government promising to do something about this and the time it took the banks - working at their own pace. That's £250million.

There was nothing whatever to prevent the banks 'sharing' this bounty with their customers however. To eliminate the 'float' you simply have to do as Lloyds do and pay interest for the days after payment until receipt (i.e. you just add two working days). This did not require any new payment systems to be invented - it is purely an accounting convention - and could have been legislated for, therefore, way back in 2000. Also, whilst on that point. The 'speeding up' of cheques which never took place - because cheques continue to be processed in the same way - was another banking sham. Again, there was nothing to stop the 'treatment' of cheques (as interest bearing instruments) being changed to favour the customer eight years ago. Instead, the banks managed to conflate this change with the move to Faster Payments. In 2005 they agree to start treating cheques differently but only after a further two years! That was a flanker was it not?

As to this 'roll out' nonsense - initially there was never any mention of this. At first the annoncements talked of 'delivering' a new paymetns system. Later they referred to the expected 'launch' of the said system. Only at the last minute (April 28 this year) did they start talking about 'introducing' (subtle tense change) and thereafter it bacame as 'rollout'. But this 'rollout' was meant to be in relation to banks - not some branches as some banks!

No need to compare Faster Payments to the T5 fiasco - it deserves a place in the history of incompetence (and mendacity) all of its own!

Viper_7

Milarky wrote: »

Urban myth?

FACT

I've seen too many myths on here already without the facts!

It was always going to be a phased roll-out. Billions of pounds going through a new system, it was never just going to be turned on full throttle from day 1.

Hence all the 1p payments that occurred on the first day to temporary non customer accounts to prove the settlement systems in a live environment.

Must say though it's true it's not been that well published covering the period of the rollout can understand the confusion.

Seeing nothing in the news though is only a good thing, it shows it's working as designed.

Vipes

jorichste

I read the first and last page so the bit in the middle is probs saying this already lol!!!! just thought I'd share with you all that I transferred, online, £480 from my natwest account to my sisters barclays account today. it reached her account in moments. How cool is that???

YorkshireBoy

Viper_7 wrote: »

Hence all the 1p payments that occurred on the first day to temporary non customer accounts to prove the settlement systems in a live environment.

Are you suggesting that the first time the system went "live" was on the 27th May? Despite many years in the making, and at least one 6 month setback to the launch (correction...roll-out) date?

1p transfers would suggest they didn't have a lot of confidence in this well-planned, high cost, system. :rotfl:

Or maybe you meant they sent, say, between them, 16 million 1p transactions simultaneously to 'traffic test' the system.

Have to say, it all sounds a bit 'last-minute' to me!

Viper_7

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

Are you suggesting that the first time the system went "live" was on the 27th May? Despite many years in the making, and at least one 6 month setback to the launch (correction...roll-out) date?

1p transfers would suggest they didn't have a lot of confidence in this well-planned, high cost, system. :rotfl:

Or maybe you meant they sent, say, between them, 16 million 1p transactions simultaneously to 'traffic test' the system.

Have to say, it all sounds a bit 'last-minute' to me!

There was a 6 months delay as they wanted to ensure it was ready. It would be a little embarrassing and very costly if there were problems. This was more a delay than a launch date change.

The volume testing was performed in testing and the systems are spec'd to handle well over the volumes including further growth.

The many millions of 1p payments were to satisfy the regulators in a live environment the implementation was successful. Easier to sort out lots of pennies than many millions IF there were any problems.

jamesd

Viper_7, when it comes to charges it will be interesting to see if customers are made to directly pay for what should be a significant improvement in the efficiency of the back office systems of the financial institutions. Losing the float and hopefully gaining increased operational efficiency and certainty isn't necessarily a net cost.

For those reading this who don't know what performance costs, a single 6-7,000 Pound database server can be expected to handle at least a couple of million transactions per day (at average rate of say 20-25 per second). Many more with decent disk controllers with write caches. But you'd actually want at least two, better three, of them for reliability during hardware failures. RAM-based databases with disk backup can do considerably more than that.

brightonman123

are cheques going to be included in any 'faster' scheme? sainsburys bank (run by BoS?) say wil ltake FIVE days to clear a cheque, after they receive it??

YorkshireBoy

brightonman123 wrote: »

are cheques going to be included in any 'faster' scheme?

No. There were some improvements made last November though. See...

http://www.apacs.org.uk/payment_options/2-4-6.html