A standing order is an instruction you give to your bank or building society to make payments, usually on a regular basis, to a specified third party's UK bank or building society account.

Any person or company with a current account at a bank or building society in the UK can give a standing order instruction.

The bank or building society, will on the day specified in the order, debit your account and transfer the money through the Bacs system to the bank or building society account of the recipient.

Currently the money arrives with the recipient within three working days, e.g. for a standing order initiated on a Monday, the earliest it could arrive would be the Wednesday. However, standing orders will be processed on the same day from June 2008, following the introduction of the Faster Payments Service.

For further information about standing orders and related topics click on the links on the right hand side of this page.