The new system, which allows for faster online or phone payments, will place the UK up with the frontrunners of similar systems around the globe. It will enable payments to complete end-to-end within a couple of hours, as well as speeding up the process of standing order payments.
The UK banking industry has also confirmed that there are already 13 founding members, with more financial institutions to gain access to the system for their customers through agency arrangements with a founding member, in due course.
The central system will be available in November 2007, but it is up to each bank or building society to decide how and when it will deliver a full service to all its personal and corporate customers.
Building a new payments system of this scale is a mammoth task: this is a multi-million pound project to deliver a state-of-the-art system that will speed up phone, online and standing order payments, said Paul Smee, chief executive of Apacs. Central testing of the new infrastructure has already started and although in its early stages, is going well. In saying that, meeting our November target is still enormously challenging because all thirteen members have to link to the system and carry out further tests to ensure the new system will be safe, efficient and robust.
This service will be great for any customer wanting to move money quickly – perhaps to pay a bill or move money between accounts. Like the internet, it will be available all day, and will move a payment within a few hours and on any day of the week, he added.
