In May 2005, the Payment Systems Task Force, chaired by the Office of Fair Trading, announced that an agreement had been reached with the banking industry to reduce clearing times on phone, internet and standing order payments. 

Initially, the banking industry committed to develop a system whereby payments would clear in half a day. The banking industry has, however, surpassed this by creating a system where the beneficiary should be able to access funds within a couple of hours of a payment being made. This is a huge improvement on the current system, where the vast majority of electronic payments take three working days to be processed. 

In October 2005, the contract to provide the central infrastructure for this new service was awarded by APACS to Immediate Payments Limited, a joint venture company set up by Voca and LINK who have since merged to form VocaLink.

Which organisations are involved in this development?

CHAPS Clearing Comapny has taken responsibility for the day-to-day operations and management of the service. CHAPS Clearing Company is a member-based company providing strategic direction for the CHAPS sterling high-value same-day payment system.

APACS was responsible for the development and delivery of the Faster Payments Service. The design of the Faster Payments Service has been a joint project between Immediate Payments Ltd. (IPL), APACS and the 13 founding member banks, based on a commitment made to the OFT Payment Systems Task Force in 2005.  IPL, a VocaLink company, is supplying the central network for the Faster Payments Service. 

The founding members are:

Abbey, Alliance & Leicester, Barclays, Citi, Co-operative Bank, Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banks (National Australia Group) HBOS, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Nationwide Building Society, Northern Bank (Danske Bank), Northern Rock, Royal Bank of Scotland Group (including NatWest and Ulster Bank).